Re: fitting a saddle to a young horse

[Laney Humphrey <laneyh@mbay.net>]

Kat - maturity sure does things to our shapes, doesn't it?!  And of course
it does for a horse too.
	The sense I've gotten from the replies so far is that horses' backs change
all the time because of growth, maturity, conditioning, weight gain/loss,
etc., etc., etc. so there is probably no perfect time for fitting a saddle.
 Having several saddles seems to be a good idea but some saddles, or at
least types of saddles, seem to fit a greater variety of back shapes than
others.
	For those of you that commented that your horse grew, esp. in the withers:
did the shape of the back change besides the withers getting higher?
Thanks all for your input!
Laney
At 03:22 PM 1/6/99 -0800, you wrote:
>
>I will use more than one saddle, sometime during the course of a single
>ride...admittedly, this usually happens at multi-day rides.  A few years
>ago, the first two days of the Outlaw Trail I used one saddle, the last
>two days, one with a slightly narrower tree.
>
>I have found that the shapes of my horse's backs change dramatically as
>their condition changes, and I will usually tell people not to go out and
>spend loads of money for a perfect fit on a horse that is not currently in
>the conditing you expect the horse to spend most of its life in.
>
>One horse that I am working with is a "rescue" horse.  Prominent spine,
>swayed back, muscle atrophy over and behind the shoulder.  None of the
>saddles that the owner has fits the horse, but just over the last month as
>work lays muscle over the entire top line the shape of the horse's back
>has changed dramatically...and I hope will continue to do so, until he has
>the muscles through the loins, along the underline, to properly round his
>back.  Then maybe the saddles the woman owns will fit her horse.  If not,
>THEN she can go saddle shopping.  In the mean time, she is borrowing one
>of mine that is "adequate" (not a perfect fit, but something that he can
>work comfortably in).
>
>Horse's backs also change as they mature.  My TB mare used to be (when I
>got her as a 4 year old) a bit mutton withered.  She now is (to quote my
>feed dealer) "high withered sucker isn't she?"  The saddle that fits her
>today is quite different from the one that I used on her when she was 4 (I
>still own both of them).  And yes, she is also about 1 1/2 inches taller
>at the whithers than she was when she was 4--almost all of that is
>whither.
>
>If fitted saddles are like tailored clothes, then of course they fit
>differently as you age, mature, change your musculature, etc.  I am MUCH
>broader through the shoulders than I used to be (back before I spent time
>training stallions :)).
>
>kat
>Orange County, Calif.
>
>