Those with Lavinia Mitchell saddles …

I have one and it lovely, I’ve had it fitted by both their fitters and a “normal” one. The traditional fitter noticed how wide it is but agreed it should be shimmed to fit exactly like the LM fitter.
 
Many thanks for your replies. That's good to hear as they only have a few fitters. My thinking was a decent saddle fitter must have heard of them and understand their fitting ethos so should be able to fit accordingly
 
criso said:
Do they try to tell you it's too wide given they are fitted differently or do they know to adjust for that.
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I use Matt Crippen his just a regular saddle fitter bit understands the wider more difficult to fit types, his fitted my LM saddles for my Arab's for years.
 
criso said:
I never had anyone else look at mine but I'm not sure anyone else would put that wide a saddle on a tb.
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They come narrower the fitting system is size 1 being the narrowest and they go up to size 6 so they don't just fit wide horses.

When lavinia set up the company she designed them because she felt alot of saddles on the market were not great for any horses back.

They have big wide panels so the weight is spread more evenly and the gullet is wider for spine clearance.
 
Pinkvboots said:
They come narrower the fitting system is size 1 being the narrowest and they go up to size 6 so they don't just fit wide horses.

When lavinia set up the company she designed them because she felt alot of saddles on the market were not great for any horses back.

They have big wide panels so the weight is spread more evenly and the gullet is wider for spine clearance.
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Mine is a size 3 on my tb, Lavinia herself fitted and checked it before she retired.

I'm just a bit nervous about getting someone else look at it in case they don't understand the principle and tell me it doesn't fit.

I sat another saddle on my horses back for a sales photo, in theory it wasn't the wrong width but the ears back told me he didn't appreciate it and prefers his wide saddle and gullet.
 
SCG said:
Many thanks for your replies. That's good to hear as they only have a few fitters. My thinking was a decent saddle fitter must have heard of them and understand their fitting ethos so should be able to fit accordingly
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Not necessarily. I was talking to another saddle fitter who works for a big saddle saddler in this area and she had never heard of them.
 
criso said:
Mine is a size 3 on my tb, Lavinia herself fitted and checked it before she retired.

I'm just a bit nervous about getting someone else look at it in case they don't understand the principle and tell me it doesn't fit.

I sat another saddle on my horses back for a sales photo, in theory it wasn't the wrong width but the ears back told me he didn't appreciate it and prefers his wide saddle and gullet.
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When I first used Matt I just explained the concept to him as Arabi had shims because he had muscle wastage from a previous saddle.

He got it straight away flocked the saddle in accordance with the shims and it was fine.

I suppose it depends on who you use I've had a few fitter that just kept making Arabi's saddle narrower to fit his damaged back, so they were pretty clueless and I'm just glad I found Lavinia when I did.
 
Lavinia trained with Balance International - it was Carol Brett and Lesley Ann Taylor who had the initial ideas about saddle width and padding. More saddlers might have heard of 'Balance' than LM because they caused quite a lot of controversy when they started. Keren Morris has now taken over the core of what was Balance - her website is here https://thvsaddling.com/. Might give you some links to sources of help that are closer to you or I think she still does distance consultations.
 
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