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Re: [RC] wide saddle search - Karen Sullivan----- Original Message ----- From: "Nancy" <nancy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Now my slim daughter and Lyric growing an inch or two in length, a 14 inch Bob Marshall barrel saddle fits perfectly. Lyric moves out with this saddle and has new gears we didn't know were there. Lyric also has a all purpose English saddle, a draft saddle! Yep, that is one wide saddle. We recently measured Lyric with a flexible curve and found her to be 9 1/2 inches wide in the withers were the bars would be. No wonder almost all saddles do not fit. Hi Nancy and all, I rode for years and years in a Bob Marshall 14" Schooling and Training model (which has basically the same pommel as the barrel model)...my current young mare is also pretty wide (a "wide" Stubben in 32 cm tree is not wide enough....)...and what I discovered was that the Sport Saddles are not very "wide" under the pommel section, and it was pinching pretty badly. That pommel piece is one part of a fairly decent saddle design, however, that has no give at all....it seemed to work okay on my other horses, but not the current three I have.... Here is what I suggest.... put your daughter in the saddle on the horse, and see if you can slip your hand under the front sides of the saddle where the base of the pommel is....on my mare I could not do it at all.... and the problem can really get compounded if someone cinches really tight to keep the saddle from slipping;then that pommel is really jammed down on the shoulder. Also try this while turning horse in a circle... This is a huge change for me, as I rode sport saddles for about13 years, and really promoted them....but have seen some really bad spine rubs from the saddle on prominent spine horses...plus the pommel problem. My mare also got two really bad loin rubs last fall, which caused me to really start taking a good look at the design of the saddle. On the flip side....the pommel can be too wide on a really narrow horse....which will drop the top of the saddle in the front right down on the withers....also not good. I started checking my friends sport saddles (we have a pretty big group of ladies who ride them)...and found several that were sitting right on the withers, and the vast majority were too tight in the pommel....I found only two that seemed to be an okay fit in the pommel area.....one was my personal endurance saddle that I sold to a friend after I had cut-back the top of the saddle to give wither clearance....and the other a standard endurance model on an Arab/Andalusian. The endurance pommel is the widest choice, and I have heard that on custom orders you can have them grind down the base a bit to make it a bit wider by 1/4" or so. The barrel and reiner pommels are not really narrower than the endurance pommel,but have different angles, which do make them fit differently and for all practical purposes they fit narrower. Getting a peaked front with endurance pommel with also somehow effectively narrow the pommel fit. Those are the choices, with not that much difference in widths.....so my advice to folks is to really check that pommel fit, again, with a rider in the saddle and a friend checking for clearance. There were many, many things I loved about the sport saddles,and I used them for years on many different horses, never got white hairs or rubs or soreness I could detect, until these young horses. My mare was getting more and more grumpy while being saddled, making chewing faces and pinning ears (which has gone away with the new saddle, a custom Reactor Panel)....and with the sport saddles was just poking along on downhill trails.... The saddle could definatley be improved by having a choice of pommel's in different widths (maybe even interchangeable ones). Some of the newer treeless saddle designs such as Torsion,Startrekk and Barefoot are doing this now. Freeform saddles have a very flexible gullet plate that allows it to fit different width horses. I also really like the idea in treeless saddles of having panels under the saddle that create a gullet for the spine and withers (Startrekk has this)...A split pad such as skito or equipedic can also help get a treeless saddle off the spine of the horse, but may not be enough clearance for all horses.... Anyway, this is all just a point of caution....for folks to realize that treeless saddles, or even semi-treeless saddles are not without problems and that the fit also needs to really be scrutinized... Anyway, just sharing what I discovered.... Karen =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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