At my wits end with saddles! Hit me with your saddles for those flat backed wider horses!

Following with interest, as wide horses are new to me!

My Welsh cob is currently in a thorowgood T4 cob, with a polite pad.
He is muscling up beautifully, it's lightweight and he's very happy but I hate it 🙈

He is 5 this year so hoping to upgrade to something we both like, but I have no idea on brands as never had a tabletop for a horse before.
 
bubsqueaks said:
Highly recommend AH saddles plus there's a good 2nd hand market for both buying & selling them.
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Agree with this. I have two, one dressage "Affinity" and one brown leather which Ic all my GP. They fit beautifully to my mare who is WB x ISH. They were fitted by Sam Wiltshire who knew his stuff but sadly no longer does fittings. Ive had both for several years now and they are still in excellent condition and wear very well. They generally sell well second hand.
 
Have various tg s, love the crosby, use it well padded, so do the horses, and the ansur treeless gives freedom, have dueber treeless doesnt suit me but good for the wider horse
 
Both mine are in Ghosts (fitted by our own sbloom). Fin is a typical wide, flat backed Highland. Fitting a Ghost to him was a pretty straightforward job.

Hermosa has that Iberian thing with a short back, wide ribcage, and a prominent wither. Plus she has lots of opinions. Took a lot of faff (lol) to make the Ghost work and we are using Freeform panels instead of the Ghost ones, which are a totally different shape. It took two hours of faff to make it work, and our intrepid saddle fitter doing things she’d never done before.

But I don’t know what else would work. I saw that in England, you can get specialist Iberian fitters to fit Iberian saddles, but that doesn’t do me any good. Making the little Ghost fit was by far our best (and only) option.

I even messaged a Scotland-based stunt/film horse team who have lots of PREs (including one of Hermosa’s half brothers) to see who fits their horses. They said they have a guy who custom makes tack for every horse. Very nice for them but he doesn’t do stuff for random punters.
 
I’m also at the end of my tether with this- in terms of English saddles on my short backed, XXW Arab.

My Specialized saddle has always been fine-they’re endlessly adjustable, imported from the US, and work on literally everything. It’s my daily ride, but I would like an English saddle to do the odd lesson in.

But English saddles on this type of horse- nope. The person who described it as trying to put a /\ on a semicircle had it spot on. I started off four years ago by having an English saddle custom made to his templates. But as he got older he changed shape, so that was outta the window. Recently we have tried a Bates dressage saddle and the same in GP, both of which slid around dangerously from side to side. I’m now considering a Strada or possibly a Thorowgood T8 , which I will fit myself as honestly I think I stand as good of a chance of doing so as continuing to pay fitters to get it wrong and I’m all spent out trying to find the solution.

We’ve been through three saddlers, none of whom have really ‘got’ the problem and we are thousands of pounds worse off.

My Specialized fitter gets it- but then he fits a lot of very wide horses and has the tools to make the type of saddles he stocks work for them.

Feeling all your pain! If you don’t mind not having an English looking saddle, I can highly recommend Specialized. They’re so so comfy as well.
 
For years I rode my old share in a Podhajski training saddle, re created by Ideal. It is a very open saddle, One can move about on it and shift ones weight. I like to ride long and the vertical knee pad is right for that.
My current sharing yard own such a saddle but I am not allowed to ride in it. I ride my share in her modern GP which is very shaped and is regarded as safer.
I ride my curent share because she is ultra safe and I am very fond of her but in the dream day when and if I buy my own Connie, the saddler assured me he would find and fit a Podhajski.
 
I've had a nightmare - and mine is recently broken so I'm not spending £2k on a saddle he'll outgrow in 6 months
He's also only 14hh so 16.5 inch and massive shoulders

My list from a couple of different saddlers was those below. I had 2 give up on me and wish me luck.

A third managed to find a Silouette - which fingers crossed seems to be doing OK for now.

Ideal H+C Apex
Black Country WH - freedom tree
Chunky Monkey - rarely see these second hand so presumably they are good.
Silouette
Pony cob and horse
Fiona Cork - flat tree
Cavaletti - WH

Lots of brands have different tree styles so one Ideal is a million miles away from the next.

I too had a saddler that suggested I just gave up the idea of riding and broke him to drive - as that is clearly what he is built for !
 
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Stenners said:
So pleased to see they are still going such comfy saddles! Do they stock to retailers do you know?
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I would imagine so but you'd need to ask them. No idea if the fit has changed etc, for me they were usually a bit curvy in the rails for my preference.

Polos Mum said:
Ideal H+C Apex
Black Country WH - freedom tree
Chunky Monkey - rarely see these second hand so presumably they are good.
Silouette
Pony cob and horse
Fiona Cork - flat tree
Cavaletti - WH

Lots of brands have different tree styles so one Ideal is a million miles away from the next.
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I can't quite believe they didn't mention AH...PCH was started by one of her ex fitters...AH is good, I used to fit them, I just love being able to optimise the rider in a slightly different way these days. And yes, even AH that's ONLY a wide horse specialist has 4 trees. Ideal is a lottery, and I'm not sure they answer queries on ID numbers these days.
 
My wide, flat warmblood likes Heather Moffett saddles and they are quite cheap to try. They have leather trees so not fixed, and the older ones don't have a solid pommel piece either - you adjust with via the panels. The newer ones do have pommel arch supports and they will take any width.
Other suggestion would be Balance - the mother of LM saddles (which I've not tried but I think they would be very similar). My horse quite likes the Free Spirit (has no solid points on the tree) but it wasn't helping my position.
 
I got through wintec wide, thorowgood cob , Kent and masters and the final nail in the coffin was a Fiona cork made to measure, none worked and all made him sore. We reluctantly tried TCS which has (touch wood) been a dream but can’t do BD dressage in it.
 
I have black country saddles on my relatively wide but huge shouldered connie. He has an eloquence dressage saddle and a GP event, both on the freedom tree.
 
I wasn't able to read all post so apology if repetition, but your OP sounds like my story with my 16.2hh ISH. We had many saddles, but we finally found our combo wihich was Kent & Masters flat back (not cob!), sheepskin half pad (not full pad or type of half pad) and prolite girth that is a few cm too short and therefore sits lower than it "should". That's what he likes and he's been going so well for almost a year!

It took a while, significantly more expensive saddles, equitex pads, and girths. So figure. GOOD LUCK!
 
Another recommendation for Sam Rhodes at Chunky Monkey. I needed a new saddle because the horses shape had changed during rehab, but was pleasantly surprised by how much my position benefited! I knew a few people with them on different shaped horses and she came highly recommended.
 
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A public service announcement for those with flat backed wide horses, especially for those who are particularly well-sprung in the rib cage department... if you do decide to ride them bareback, do it before you give them a proper groom and put show sheen on.

I stayed on but there are muscles I have used which I don't think any human on earth knows they have.
 
Well I have an update!! I went for a fitting on Friday and got fitted with the most amazing saddle! It's an Ideal Grandee - I absolutely love it - he went soooo well in it, the difference was amazing! However I need to wait 2.5 weeks for it to arrive as no brown in stock but they have some on order arriving soon!
 
Stenners said:
Well I have an update!! I went for a fitting on Friday and got fitted with the most amazing saddle! It's an Ideal Grandee - I absolutely love it - he went soooo well in it, the difference was amazing! However I need to wait 2.5 weeks for it to arrive as no brown in stock but they have some on order arriving soon!
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Excellent news - I loved mine, and my horses went very freely in it.
 
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