Help identifying peculiar, old endurance saddle

[keithr@nocdc.bc.ca (Ann Hatfield)]

I recently bought a rather odd saddle which may be a prototype endurance
saddle.  I looked for it's ancestry in a saddle encyclopaedia but find
nothing there on endurance saddles per se.  My guess is it was built on an
American military tree with modifications.  Supposedly comes from southern
States.  It looks a bit like a Sharon Saare saddle-a bit!

The pommel is a high bow wrapped with leather.  There are two pockets on
the front of the bow about big enough to hold a sizeable pocket knife.  The
dealer told me one was to hold a derringer (spelling?) handgun to kill
snakes!  It would be a mighty small gun to fit in that pocket.  (Now some
of you will laugh that I, of all people, might have a saddle designed to
carry a handgun- if you remember my name and the whole 'carrying a gun'
thread!)

The forward part of the seat is divided-like the old McLellands or U.S.
cavalry saddles.  The seat is not divided beyond about where the front of
the rider's crotch is located,  there the saddle becomes solid and padded
(not enough though!)  The 'padding' fills the cantle so there is almost no
dip or bowl to the seat.  Directly behind the bow- pommel the twist is very
narrow, almost a pocket for your thighs before the seat widens and the
'padding' begins.  Very secure and quite comfortable.

The girth is suspended from a large flat brass ring hung on two straps-like
the military saddles, and there is a ring for a rear girth, too.  There are
strings on skirts for attaching gear at the traditional locations for a
western saddle and the stirrups were western, leather-bound wood, with
Blevins buckles on the leathers.  Put my plastic- caged endurance stirrups
on instead, sacriledge!

The tree has a rather narrow gullet and the bars are sheepskin -covered
like a traditional western saddle.

So why did I buy this strange beast?  It fits the horse, it's surprizingly
comfortable and amazingly secure.  Some cantle would be a nice improvement,
though, and I think I'll try to fake one incorporated into a sheepskin bum
saver-ahh!

A neighbour needed 78 cows moved out of a flooding pasture NOW so a cowboy
friend and another friend and I did it.  This little manoever included
wading flooding natural canals with a horse who had never been in anything
deeper than fetlock-deep and who takes Olympic-size jumps over tiny
rivulets.  The 'wading' became so deep we were in over my knees-mounted on
him- many times, and he swam a stride or two in some places.  Anyway he got
very keen on galloping ahead to cut off cows and barreling into these
canals in great lunges and I actually stayed on that funny, rearless
saddle. Couldn't even hang on to that handy bow-needed both hands for
discussions about what part of those murky, possibly pot-holed canals we
were about to leap into.

Soaked and pleased with oursleves later my friend laughed down at me from
his great solid cow horse and commented that the scrawny little Arab seemed
to have the makings of a gutsy cow pony but he sure didn't know about that
strange saddle with those *&%# stirrups!

Anybody seen anything like this?

Ann