So I had the saddler out... you were all right so thank you!

sandi_84

sandi_84

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The saddle Loki was in was too narrow for him and he does have some slight sore spots on his back from where the saddle was pressuring him :( My poor boy, I feel devastated for him because he is so gentle and stoic he just got on with his job without a grumble :(

She's advised me to just continue with the bareback saddle and gentle walk hacks for the next few weeks and see how he gets on. She's going to put me in touch with a back specialist (physio I think) who she highly reccomends just in case after the couple of weeks hacking he's still a bit sore.

Once his back is pain free again she's going to come back out with some saddles and see what one will work, take it away and do the necessary adjustments and then I get to trial it for 2-3 weeks before handing over the full payment. If it's not right we start the process again with a different saddle which is really good of her!

On the plus side she thinks I should be able to part exchange my saddle for around £300 which will help pay for the new saddle :)

Anyway, thank you everyone for the advice even if sometimes it was hard to swallow you were right and I'd rather swallow my pride and fix it so Loki is happy and comfortable again :)

In the meantime I have a book coming on saddle fitting for horse owners to educate myself on what I should be looking for (saddle fitter was really good at pointing it all out for me too) so in the future I will be better equipped :)
 
Aww bless him! Glad you are getting sorted, also interested in the book you are getting. I find the schleese saddle fitting videos on YouTube are really good. It's important for us to have a vague idea I think, but it is hard!
 
I know, he's such a chilled out sweet guy that he would never buck or pull faces at me or anything! He just put his happy face on and trundled on :o
Thank goodness for the timely new job to pay for it all too ;)

The book that I ordered is called "Saddle Fitting (Allen Photographic Guides)", I wanted to get "Pain Free Horse" and "Practical Saddle Fitting" by Ken Lyndon-Dykes as recommended by Baileyhoss but I had less than £6 in my account so I went with that book because it seemed to have really good reviews and it will do for a little homework till I get my first pay and can afford the other books :)

I really want to learn more about this sort of thing (well and everything else horse related! ;)) because I am completely clueless about saddle fitting and had to rely completely on my previous Saddler's advice which turned out to have been wrong caused my poor lad pain :( and unfortunately I'll have a loss of about £200 on the saddle that doesn't fit :/

I'll never be an expert but at the very least I can educate myself to better understand what I should be looking for in a saddle and how to tell if it is a decent fit or not.

The new Saddler was really good, she explained everything she was doing and why, showed me how to check the length of the saddle compared to the horse and how much there should be between the cantle and last rib, the clearance over his withers and back, showed me how to use a flexi curve to check the width of the saddle compared to Loki (need to get me one of those for the future. Loki seemed to think it looked pretty tasty and impeded the process slightly trying to eat it :D) and explained why my saddle didn't fit properly and where it was putting excess pressure on Loki's back.
She was very sweet with Loki giving him lots of cuddles after finding the sore spot and praising him for being so good about all the prodding she was doing :)

She's also been really good in that she's going to put me in touch with the back lady, help me exchange my saddle for a good price and find me a well fitting one at a reasonable price tag (she doesn't carry saddles but knows people that do) :) I'm also really grateful that she's going to let me trial our new saddle (after any adjustments) for a couple of weeks too, I don't know if that's a common practice but none of our saddle fitters have ever offered that before. All in all I'm really liking her and she's of the same opinion that Loki is the most important thing and we need to make him as comfortable as a horse can possibly be :D She's a really nice person :)
 
Also mum asked if while she was there could she check her mare's saddle fit too which she happily did (fits perfectly!) and only charged us a total of £15! So mum basically got her saddle checked for free (and then she split the cost with me ;)) how nice was that?! :D
 
Sounds like it was a very informative afternoon :)

I went down the treeless, or soft treed route more specifically, for mine as I wasnt happy with treed saddles. I couldnt understand how a rigid object such as a tree could possibly be comfortable on a moving object! The more research I did the more I felt I was right so looked for alternative options :)

http://www.enlightenedequitation.com/flexee_intro.htm
 
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