How come saddles . . .

TarrSteps

TarrSteps

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. . seem so impossible now?

This is really a question for hho'ers of a more advanced age, like me. ;)

I know we've had discussions before about the 'good ol' days' and how things are done in far off, less civilised ;) lands, and come to the rightful conclusion that saddle fitting has come on loads in the last few decades. But why are so many horses 'impossible to fit'? It seems like every second one is the 'wrong' shape for standard models - have I just been reading too much hho? ;) If this is true it begs the question why are they not making saddles for horses as they are?

I would be interested in thoughts from other riders who have bridged the gap from 'buy it off the shelf, get it restuffed once and awhile' to 'every horse should have a custom saddle'.

A very good saddler once told me the saddle should be a template for the horse going well - it should actually help 'shape' the horse's back so that it's comfortable when the horse goes well, less so when it goes badly. Congruent to that, saddles should not be fitted to a pathology or incorrect way of going because it will 'splint' that way of going.

Thoughts?
 
I'd caveat this forever, as my opinion counts for veeeery little, but...

Is it a consequence of education? By that I mean, your average amateur competition rider (sweeping statements ahoy!!) has more information and awareness than they may have done 10 years ago, which is undoubtably a good thing - but means that people are spending more & more time & money to ensure everything is perfect before the horse is put under pressure?

By comparison on a pro yard the horse will be expected to perform, and this would usually be facilitated by a saddle the pro likes, which he/she may have in a couple of different versions, and then pad accordingly to recreate the feel for the rider & ensure the horse is comfortable. This would, I guess, mean that the saddle is about the right width & shape for the horses' back. But it may not be perfect...
 
I wonder if its just that we've forgotten how common it was to see saddle sores, atrophied muscle, white hair on the withers and even those conditions like Fistulous Withers.
 
I've been through this this year and my delightful little 5yr old cob now has a wow saddle and mattes girth although he'll probably end up with a fairfax to as he prefers this, sensitive little soul!
I agree that its probably a consequence of education but also as a result of this we are expecting more of our normal horses and at a higher standard.
 
I'm going to wade in with my unqualified opinion....

I think there are two factors in addition to the above that have arguably had more or less impact.

Firstly, the materials we make saddle from. Leather and wool were pretty adjustable, making a saddle fit for far longer with some adjustment.

Secondly, I think saddlers- some, not all!- have lost some of their skill in that respect. All too quickly I think it's "new saddle time" whereas in years gone by it would hve been more "make do and mend".
 
I'm coming at this from several angles: I am both old and an ex pro trainer (dressage), and I find the amount of fussing over bloomin' saddles nowadays absolutely extraordinary. Obviously a saddle must fit the horse (and also the rider), but it doesn't take a genius to tell if a saddle fits or not - most competent (or even just interested) horse persons can find out how to fit a saddle in a basic way with a little guidance. When I was riding professionally we had about six saddles of the narrow/medium/wide variety, and I NEVER had a horse I wasn't able to fit satisfactorily even if it involved a little extra padding in the numnah. And I see an awful lot more horses these days with sore backs actually, but I honestly think this is from unbalanced riders, not the (usually "professionally" fitted) saddles. Oh, and the worst sore back I've seen recently was caused by a very incompetent "sack o' spuds" rider on a custom made saddle, who told me her horse couldn't have a sore back because the saddle had cost £3,000.
 
Am old so at least qualify I one way. I am not sure my answer is going to be very co-herent but I think it is similar to Cortez's. Saddles obviously have to fit and I have had a problem in the past with one that did not but I think there is a "it must be the saddle" when perhaps it is not element as well.

I have two horses both TB but different size and shape to look at though both very well put together and they use the same every day saddle. It was off the shelf, fitted by a good saddler. It is also comfortable for me and wasn't expensive.
 
My thought with a lot of difficult to fit horses like cobs is they were never designed to be ridden but instead driven?
 
I think there is also a certain element of paranoia, that is somewhat fuelled by an age of easy information where we can read the horror stories of badly fitting saddles on the internet. I also think that it is one of the things that riders/owners can control relatively easily - it is a very appealing idea that the 'perfect' saddle can massively improve the horse's way of going and protect it from back injuries. While that appealing idea may not be entirely true it is very powerful in marketing terms.
 
I quite agree with Cortez.

When I got back into horses a year ago I didn't have any tack at all, so I "did the right thing" and bought a professionally fitted English made saddle which cost me £1560. It has never fitted properly. It has put me in a rubbish position.

I wanted a jumping saddle and one night looking on eBay I saw exactly what I wanted, brand new £1500 saddle, at £500 buy it now. So I did. Stuck it on the horse, fits perfectly, horse goes a million times better in it, my position is a million times better in it. I maybe just got lucky and next time I might have to buy and sell ten before getting the right one, but I won't be chucking away £1560 ever again that's for sure!
 
I'm afraid I'm both an old fart and someone who is obsessed with saddle fit. I'm ashamed to remember a childhood pony that had a saddle that rubbed badly enough to leave white hairs. We were advised to bung a big piece of foam under the saddle and carry on! The thought now makes me cringe.
I think back in those days horses that objected to poorly fitted tack were just written off as naughty or quirky and a hell of a lot of them just put up with it too.
I think as with all things as people become more informed and educated then things evolve with that and new and better innovations arise. And this is a good thing! One of my horses will let me know in no uncertain terms if the saddle isn't right (usually by bucking Landing from a fence) In the past that would probably have been seen as high spirits or naughtiness and her saddle is never fitting badly enough to cause actual rubs or white hairs! The new horse I am still waiting on tack for her (hopefully coming next week and I can't wait) I'm having to use the other horses tack on her with a riser pad under it to get some semblance of fit. I'm fully aware it's still not perfect but has she objected to it.... No. She has a more forgiving nature than the other I suppose.... But deserves a well fitting saddle as much!
 
My saddler thinks I purposely choose horses that are very hard to fit to test her saddle fitting skills! All 3 of mine are strange shapes. One is a mega narrow, dippy backed thoroughbred but by chance she had a second hand perfect fitting dressage saddle in stock and it fits like a dream!
My second is a very very wide welsh x who moves over his back and shifts every saddle to the side. Plus he has a fairly dippy back. He ended up with a made to measure harry dabbs dressage using a native pony tree.
My third is a connie x who has a very flat back and all the saddles we tried lifted up at the back because they had a curved tree. Luckily, the off the shelf harry dabbs have flatter trees so fitted her lovely. Plus they are adjustable so if she grows (she is only 4) it can be changed to fit her.

My saddler is lovely as she always tries her best to get the best possible option to fit my horses. A lot of saddlers in the past have just turned us away saying nothing will fit or made us buy an awful fitting saddle that has worn away their muscles. Now my horses never have sore backs (always get a clean bill of health from the physio) which is a nice change :)
 
Cortez said:
Obviously a saddle must fit the horse (and also the rider), but it doesn't take a genius to tell if a saddle fits or not - most competent (or even just interested) horse persons can find out how to fit a saddle in a basic way with a little guidance. When I was riding professionally we had about six saddles of the narrow/medium/wide variety, and I NEVER had a horse I wasn't able to fit satisfactorily even if it involved a little extra padding in the numnah. And I see an awful lot more horses these days with sore backs actually, but I honestly think this is from unbalanced riders, not the (usually "professionally" fitted) saddles.
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I think knowing if it fits is the easy part, its knowing what to do to make it fit that's the more difficult thing.

I have a horse that according to hho should be difficult to fit, he has low wide withers and a flat back. I got the saddler out and he had a second hand one with him that fits him perfectly and is very comfortable for me. Maybe I was lucky or maybe some like to make an issue out of it so they can sell a new saddle.
 
I agree absolutely that in the past people didn't always know/care that their horse's saddle didn't fit. Horses can be so incredibly long suffering and show very few signs of being in pain and as stated above, if they did it was put down to bad behaviour. This attitude is still not as uncommon as it should be though!

However, I do think so many of the more modern saddles are made with profit in mind and aimed more at the rider than the horse. Ie., it looks good, feels amazing to sit in and possibly has some 'gadget factor'. One immediate example that springs to mind is some of the close contact saddles.

Like so many basic horsey skills, saddle fitting seems more and more to be something we leave to the professionals. Great in theory, but if you have no basic knowledge it can be very hard to tell if your professional is getting it right - and they certainly don't always!

Although not the be all and end all, the point about leather and wool being more forgiving is also a good one I think.
 
But then you have the actual saddles - they have changed a lot since I was a child. A lot more imports now, just look at EBay, there are saddles out there that should never be let near a horse.
 
Hmmm following my lightbulb moment yesterday (In which I realised I am not built to ride in a dressage saddle). It is something which regularly crops ups when I am asked to ride a horse for someone (usually a naughty horse), that people have had saddles 'fitted' and it is blatantly obvious that the saddle doesn't fit the horse in any way at all. Not all horses can wear dressage saddles, not all horses can wear close contact saddles and fat horses (of which there are thousands) won't fit anything at all! I have a variety of saddles that fit most horses. Saddles should just 'look' right when sitting on a horse and the current fashion for 18" seats is in my opinion part of the problem with so many horses and back issues.
 
I have yet to meet a horse that hasn't been 'difficult to fit to'. Come to the conclusion that all horses are difficult to fit to :tongue3:
 
ann-jen said:
I'm afraid I'm both an old fart and someone who is obsessed with saddle fit. I'm ashamed to remember a childhood pony that had a saddle that rubbed badly enough to leave white hairs. We were advised to bung a big piece of foam under the saddle and carry on! The thought now makes me cringe.
I think back in those days horses that objected to poorly fitted tack were just written off as naughty or quirky and a hell of a lot of them just put up with it too.
I think as with all things as people become more informed and educated then things evolve with that and new and better innovations arise. And this is a good thing! One of my horses will let me know in no uncertain terms if the saddle isn't right (usually by bucking Landing from a fence) In the past that would probably have been seen as high spirits or naughtiness and her saddle is never fitting badly enough to cause actual rubs or white hairs! The new horse I am still waiting on tack for her (hopefully coming next week and I can't wait) I'm having to use the other horses tack on her with a riser pad under it to get some semblance of fit. I'm fully aware it's still not perfect but has she objected to it.... No. She has a more forgiving nature than the other I suppose.... But deserves a well fitting saddle as much!
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I think this is a good point.

Cortez, in some ways I'm suprised by your post as I think part of the problem is our liking for foreign breeds. In the dim and distant past you never ever saw spanish horses for example - except in the circus. Warmbloods were like hens teeth and built like outhouses and everyone rode TB's or hunter types who were pretty standard shapes.

As Lec says coloured cobs were for carts and clipped smart cobs were not common.

I have x2 interchangeable saddles for 2 traditional hunter types who are easy to fit, and I could buy off ebay for them, and one Spanish type who is a nightmare to fit. There would not have been a saddle available off the shelf for the Spanish type in the past. he would have had really wide flat but light weight little saddle, which would have served but would have not been any use to rider & which would probably have made him sore.
 
I'm also thinking that perhaps todays owners are more happy to spend more money on their basic pleasure/hacking horses than in times gone by too.
 
Having started riding in 64 I guess I qualify as an older member :o
My personal feeling is that a saddle is fitted to the horse as it is in that moment in time. If the horse changes shape the saddle will no longer fit.
How many times do you see comments on this forum of
"put on weight due to spring grass"
"a bit lean as just coming out of winter"
"I like them to carry a bit of extra weight going in to winter"
This I think is a modern trend as the majority of pleasure horses are just not worked enough.
I've been nagging both my OH and my daughter about working their horses more. Sure they ride 6 days a week but the amount of work the horse gets each day is too little.
Back when I were a youth schooling a horse was an hour plus which would include both flat and jumping, not one or the other. The warm up and cool down were on top of this. What I see now is 15 minutes ploding around to warm up, 15 minutes actual work and then another 10 minutes plodding to cool of. Hacks would be most of the morning, afternoon or all day and it would include a lot of trotting and canter work. Not a 45 minutes walk round the block.
A sponsored ride would be 25 to 30 miles, NOT 10k. Hell thats just a warm up.
I smile and cringe inwardly when I see threads asking "could my horse manage a 2 hour hack as it will be mostly in walk".
There is no reason an established (not young) horse in work should change shape through the year. If they do then the saddle will not fit very often. Problem is too much feed regardless of type of work coupled with a strange concept of what constitues working a horse.
Horses were a lot fitter and more consistent in weight 30 years ago, just like the human population.
 
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Is it perhaps the fact that people are happy to voice (on forums etc) when their saddle doesn't fit? But those off us with saddles that fit and don't cause the horse any problems don't have any need to speak out about it.

I think in the world today (I'm a dressage rider and trainer) saddle fit is much more in the fore front, even more possibly so due to increased physio/chiro/massage etc - if the horse is found to be tight in the saddle area when having a treatment then it is assumed the saddle doesn't fit. Whereas 'before' physio etc was less common practice, now its drummed in to us that tack, back and teeth are the solution to any problem the horse might have. (And feet as well but that's a whole other story!)
 
My old boy was fairly broad, and I had one saddler tell me he was a made to measure job, and another who was able to fit something off the peg that he was very happy wearing, I think some of them just don't try hard enough (he didn't even measure him, just took one look and told me "you'll not get anything to fit that - it's like a bloody table") whereas others will try their best to find the right saddle (she brought loads and narrowed it down to 2 that fitted him).

I have an adjustable wintec at the moment that I bought for an ISH I had on loan, I had it refitted to my youngster wb, but on an interesting side note it has cair panels and both horses bucked like crazy the first time they wore it, although it fits well and they were fine after that initial fitting - very wierd. Don't think I will have cair again once baby wb finishes growing and gets a leather saddle.
 
Cortez said:
I'm coming at this from several angles: I am both old and an ex pro trainer (dressage), and I find the amount of fussing over bloomin' saddles nowadays absolutely extraordinary. Obviously a saddle must fit the horse (and also the rider), but it doesn't take a genius to tell if a saddle fits or not - most competent (or even just interested) horse persons can find out how to fit a saddle in a basic way with a little guidance. When I was riding professionally we had about six saddles of the narrow/medium/wide variety, and I NEVER had a horse I wasn't able to fit satisfactorily even if it involved a little extra padding in the numnah. And I see an awful lot more horses these days with sore backs actually, but I honestly think this is from unbalanced riders, not the (usually "professionally" fitted) saddles. Oh, and the worst sore back I've seen recently was caused by a very incompetent "sack o' spuds" rider on a custom made saddle, who told me her horse couldn't have a sore back because the saddle had cost £3,000.
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Great post. I agree it is not rocket science, and you can fix minor flaws with pads/numnahs. Certainly a really ill-fitting saddle can cause a sore horse, but to me all these "help my horse is running around with its head in the air/bucking/rearing/incapable of half pass" posts that inevitably get the "have you checked saddle?" response often makes one suspect the problems are more often than not caused by the riding.
 
Read any "my horse is not performing" post on here and somewhere will be the "have you had saddle / backed check question"

I think more of us have our horses backs checked on a regular basis which in turn highlights poorly fitting saddles.

The trend for latex panels means that instead of getting the flocking adjusted we turn to pads (fitted by ourselves) which is less of an exact science as I found out the hard way earlier this year!

I also think that more people do more things with their horses than before, BE and BS have more opportunties for grassroots events and those at grassroots do it more "proffesionally" than they did at RC shows which was all that was around at that level not THAT many years ago.

Finally look at the MANY different breeds, cross breeds and types of horse competing today. Lots more variety (I would have thought) in back shape than before?
 
Also agree with Cortez comment about rider balance. I used to ride a friends horse without any issues yet when she rode him he would buck and misbehave. His saddle was identified as the cause but the other factor was mostly her imbalance and tendency to lean forward which made the saddle pinch his withers. However I will also say that not everyone is as clued up as they should be. I took on a share recently and on my 2nd ride on the horse noticed that the saddle was sitting right down on his withers. When I got off and checked the saddle was rocking back and forth so really no wonder he didn't want to stand when you tried to mount. I got a cheap 2nd hand saddle which owner and I checked and double checked to make sure it was ok and we then got a fitter out to reassure us that it did indeed fit ok. Mounting issues have stopped and much happier horse. Same horse was being ridden in a bit which was far too wide and secured in place with a grackle on the advise of an experienced trainer / eventer! Both saddle and bit were hand-me-downs from a previous horse who was a cob type whilst current horse is a TB ex racer.
 
Baggybreeches said:
fat horses (of which there are thousands) won't fit anything at all!
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There! There you got it! Saddles aren't made weird, but if a horse is covered in fat pads, nothing will fit it properly. I don't think it's rocket science and none of my saddles are professionally fitted, I have a variety of horses in different shapes, hence they need a saddle each (although 2 of them could share, really), but it was easy enough to look at a horse naked, then look at the photo of a saddle on e-bay and say ''yup, that'll do''.
I have a client who struggles to find a saddle that will fit her horse, she's gone to God only knows how many saddlers and still came back empty handed... Thing is, any basic Stubben would fit OK, but the horse needs to lose about 100kg of fat deposits in weird and wonderful places.
 
Overweight horses are on the increase, overweight riders too - not a criticism, but bigger riders ideally need bigger saddles but horses ribcages have not got any longer. A rider in a too-small saddle places increased PSI on the horse's back and any saddle fitting issues can be hugely magnified. The saddle will commonly tip back placing too much pressure at the back, but equally it can sink more at the front.

Riders and owners are less educated (see the comments about saddles up on the shoulder when they should be 2" further back)...but we don't see so many saddle sores etc. Horses with back issues simply were "lame" and turned away for a few months. Now we expect horses to stay in work, we have horses at livery, and we have better diagnostics and treatments.

Baggybreeches said:
...and fat horses (of which there are thousands) won't fit anything at all!
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Horses should never be truly fat, but very wide flat horses can indeed be fitted with saddles - dressage, show, GP even jump saddles sometimes!
 
AdorableAlice said:
It always amazes me the number of saddles that are put on too far forward impinging the shoulder and girth/elbow area.
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Completely agree with this. I really notice the difference when I dont slide mine back quite far enough. The number of for sale ads I see with the saddle right forward and the riders toe touching the front leg and knee on shoulder is crazy
 
I'd like to think I can see the basic fit of a saddle well enough or not. I have a "magic" tb saddle that seems to fit all different types of them, from my great big 16.3 NH TB tank to a 15.3 stick flat TB.
 
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