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Re: [RC] wide saddle search - Karen Sullivan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nancy" <nancy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Now my slim daughter and Lyric growing an inch or two in
length, a 14 inch Bob Marshall barrel saddle fits perfectly. Lyric moves
out
with this saddle and has new gears we didn't know were there.
Lyric also has a all purpose English saddle, a draft saddle! Yep, that is
one wide saddle.  We recently measured Lyric with a flexible curve and
found
her to be 9 1/2 inches wide in the withers were the bars would be.  No
wonder almost all saddles do not fit.

Hi Nancy and all,

I rode for years and years in a Bob Marshall 14" Schooling and Training
model (which has
basically the same pommel as the barrel model)...my current young mare is
also pretty wide (a "wide" Stubben
in 32 cm tree is not wide enough....)...and what I discovered was that the
Sport Saddles are not
very "wide" under the pommel section, and it was pinching pretty badly. That
pommel piece is one
part of a fairly decent saddle design, however, that has no give at
all....it seemed to work okay on my other horses, but not the current three
I have....

Here is what I suggest.... put your daughter in the saddle on the horse, and
see if you can slip your hand
under the front sides of the saddle where the base of the pommel  is....on
my mare I could not do it at all....
and the problem can really get compounded if someone cinches really tight to
keep the saddle from slipping;then that pommel is really jammed down on the
shoulder.  Also try this while turning horse in a circle...

This is a huge change for me, as I rode sport saddles for about13 years, and
really promoted them....but have
seen some really bad spine rubs from the saddle on prominent spine
horses...plus the pommel problem.  My mare
also got two really bad loin rubs last fall, which caused me to really start
taking a good look at the design of the saddle.

On the flip side....the pommel can be too wide on a really narrow
horse....which will drop the top of the saddle in the front right down on
the withers....also not good.

I started checking my friends sport saddles (we have a pretty big group of
ladies who ride them)...and found several that were sitting right on the
withers, and the vast majority  were too tight in the pommel....I found
only two that seemed to be an okay fit in the pommel area.....one was my
personal endurance saddle that I sold to a friend after I had cut-back the
top of the saddle to give wither clearance....and the other a standard
endurance model on an Arab/Andalusian.

The endurance pommel is the widest choice, and I have heard that on custom
orders you can have them grind down the base a bit to make it a bit wider by
1/4" or so.  The barrel and reiner pommels are not really narrower than the
endurance pommel,but have different angles, which do make them fit
differently and for all practical purposes they fit narrower.  Getting a
peaked front with endurance pommel with also somehow effectively narrow the
pommel fit.  Those are the choices, with not that much difference in
widths.....so my advice to folks is to really check that pommel fit, again,
with a rider in the saddle and a friend checking for clearance.

There were many, many things I loved about the sport saddles,and I used them
for years on many different horses, never got white hairs or rubs or
soreness I could detect, until these young horses.  My mare was getting more
and more grumpy while being saddled, making chewing faces and pinning ears
(which has gone away with the new saddle, a custom Reactor Panel)....and
with the sport saddles was just poking along on downhill trails....

The saddle could definatley be improved by having a choice of pommel's in
different widths (maybe even interchangeable ones). Some of the newer
treeless saddle designs such as Torsion,Startrekk and Barefoot are doing
this now.  Freeform saddles have a very flexible gullet plate that allows it
to fit different width horses.  I also really like the idea in treeless
saddles of having panels under the saddle that create a gullet for the spine
and withers (Startrekk has this)...A split pad such as skito or equipedic
can also help get a treeless saddle off the spine of the horse, but may not
be enough clearance for all horses....

Anyway, this is all just a point of caution....for folks to realize that
treeless saddles, or even semi-treeless saddles are not without problems and
that the fit also needs to really be scrutinized...

Anyway, just sharing what I discovered....

Karen




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[RC] wide saddle search, Nancy