Saddle Fitting For Smarties

The Soul of the Saddle

Friday, January 15th, 2010 | Saddle Manufacture | No Comments

Patrick Keane Dressage Saddle from Advanced Saddle Fit

It’s simply incredible to us Americans (or at least to me) how truly “cottage” much of the saddle industry is in the UK, where all of our saddles are made.  It’s extremely human-intensive in comparison to some of the big French, Italian, and other European saddle makers who turn out extraordinarily consistent saddles one after the next, because they are produced almost entirely by automation.

For example, a high-end French or Italian saddle typically comes out of very modern, high-tech, fully automated manufacturing plant.  Human hands do very little until the last finishing bits, when a person actually hammers in the enamel nail head.  The labor component of this sort of modern Continental saddle production is a fraction what it is in the traditional saddleries of England.  In these up-to-date European plants, even the wool is precision-blown into the panels by an air compressor (though some use foam panels exclusively).  There is little or no variation in these saddles, which are consistently lovely in their way.

There is, of course, a reason that we have not embraced this type of saddle up to this point, which is that horses are far from uniform.  Designing and producing saddles meant to suit “the mean” (whatever that would be in horses or humans) is a legitimate business objective, but whether this best serves the interests of individual horses, who definitely don’t conform to a mean in reality, is another matter. › Continue reading

Tags: custom-made saddles, hand-made saddles, horse-friendly saddles, Patrick Keane Saddles, Patrick Saddlery, saddle design, saddle making, Saddle Manufacture, saddle production England, saddle production Europe, saddle trees, Walsall

Can you re-fit my saddle to my new horse?

Friday, January 1st, 2010 | saddle fitting | No Comments

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know. — Mark Twain

High maintenance? Moi?

Several times a week, at least, I get inquiries about whether it would be possible to “re-fit” a saddle that was originally purchased for a different horse.

I never know how to answer this, except to say that there is nothing black and white about fitting saddles, and to offer the observation that good fit occurs along a continuum.  The hardest thing to know is where a particular horse needs to be on that continuum for the fit to be “good enough.”

What I can tell you is that it is far easier to find fault in the fit of a saddle than it is to be certain what saddle fit solution will work well.  Where there is some deficiency in fit – which, let’s face it, is more common than not — it’s not always obvious whether the shortcoming is significant to a particular horse.

Some horses seem to do fine for a long time in saddles that, by my standards, are a complete nightmare of poor fit.  Other horses decline to even try to cope if every detail of the saddle and the pad and the bridle and the bit and the girth and the color of the bling on their browband isn’t precisely to their liking.  That would be my bay princess, pictured here. › Continue reading

Tags: fit saddle for new horse, fit saddle multiple horses, fit saddle new horse, Prolite pads, Prolite saddle pads, re-fit saddle new horse, re-fit saddle to new horse, saddle fitting, saddle flocking, saddle pads, saddle panels, Thinline saddle pads

Resistant to Research; Impervious to Logic, Part 4

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 | saddle fitting | No Comments

To understand is to perceive patterns. Isaiah Berlin

Pattern recognition is critical to a solid, enduring saddle fit solution, but sourcing the right saddle can be frustrating, as many saddles are designed primarily for rider appeal rather than optimal horse fit.

Dear readers, has anyone read Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s well-researched and entertaining book about ultra-high achievers?  The premise is that hidden patterns are often at work like an invisible hand, tipping the odds for exceptional success in quite a non-random way.

Did you know, for example, that nearly all the best ice hockey players are born in January, February, or March?  Apparently even very talented players who happen to be born in November or December may as well not even bother learning to skate, nor to kick a ball for that matter.  It turns out that soccer players with early-in-the-year birthdays are also greatly over-represented in the top ranks of that sport.  But this isn’t true in every sport.  So. . . what’s up with that? › Continue reading

Resistant to Research; Impervious to Logic, Part 3

Monday, December 28th, 2009 | saddle fitting | 2 Comments

Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known. – Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Fashion trends in saddles and conventional “rules” of saddle fitting are of little use to this hard-working fellow.

I spent a bit of time today doing a quick survey of equestrian bulletin boards where people ask for advice or express their opinions about various issues around saddles and evaluating saddle fit. › Continue reading

Tags: saddle fitter training, saddle fitting, saddle forums, saddle trends

Resistant to Research; Impervious to Logic, Part 2

Friday, December 18th, 2009 | saddle fitting | No Comments

I don’t actually need to be able to see my own liver to grasp how important it is to me.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and venture a guess that healthy livers are pretty similar to one another, and if yours isn’t up to snuff, you won’t have to see it to know it.

That is absolutely not the case with the tree inside a saddle.   As saddle fitters, we really do need to understand how a particular tree looks to understand how it functions inside a saddle.  Different types of horses require substantially different shapes of tree to attain a good, even distribution of weight over the bearing structure of the saddle.

A good start toward that objective is to be able to have examples of bare trees that are in the saddles we fit, so we can study their form and geometry.  Trust me, dear reader – this is a no-brainer.  So why is it so hard to convince people that to understand the fit of a saddle, they probably need to know more about it than what is visible on the outside?

Some of the claims that are made by saddle companies – I’m thinking particularly about trees that are touted as “adjustable” to any horse – are just wildly implausible.   For the most part, horse people are pretty smart, pretty accomplished.  So why don’t they ask harder questions when it comes to buying a saddle? Why don’t customers face down saddle companies with demands that they back their claims about their products with hard, visible evidence?    Could it be that there are inconvenient truths about saddles that consumers don’t really want to know?

I’m no stranger to tasks that are resistant to research, and, in my previous career as a Foreign Service Officer, I acquired considerable experience with folks throughout the world who were completely impervious to logic.  But when it comes to the saddle biz, I don’t think I exaggerate much in describing an entire industry that leans that way, from manufacturers to consumers, including the legions of us that scuttle between them.

From my point of view, I have an obligation to use my skill and experience as a saddle fitter to be an advocate for the horse, and to explain in some depth my underlying assumptions about how I think saddles should fit horses.  But I have moments of profound doubt that this approach, where the starting place is to get the best fit for the horse, is the easiest way to win friends and influence people. Frankly, while almost all riders who contact me for help finding the right saddle tell me that an optimal fit for their horse is their first priority, quite often that’s not entirely true.

Riders – your needs are not unimportant to me, but please consider that you have the luxury of choice; your horse doesn’t.   The good news is that in my experience, almost without exception, if you surrender yourself to a good saddle that’s decent for you and a great fit for your horse, I can all but promise that before long just such a saddle will become the leather love of your life.

Tags: horse fit, rider fit, saddle fit, saddle fitting, saddle tree

Resistant to Research; Impervious to Logic, Part 1

Monday, December 14th, 2009 | saddle fitting | 1 Comment

Critical thinking is something we’re all supposed to do – like daily flossing.  When it comes to saddle fitting, critical thinking means closely examining what we think we know about saddles, and how exactly we acquired the knowledge we think we have. It requires an honest examination of our deepest assumptions about how the world is ordered, because in saddle fitting, as in life, “facts” are subject to interpretation.

These are some of the primary “fact-based” problems we run into all the time:

1. Since riders have credit cards and horses don’t, rider appeal nearly always trumps horse fit in designing saddles commercially. (If you doubt this, take a look at how saddles are described in marketing material, which is overwhelmingly biased toward how well the saddle will suit the rider.)
2. Very few riders (and not all saddle fitters) have sufficient knowledge of saddle design and technology to evaluate comparative fit considerations accurately. In this, they get little or no help from manufacturers.
3. Not every saddle maker/designer works with hundreds of horses in the field every year as we do.  Many of them see only a small handful of horses, and rarely do they systematically follow the progress of individual horses to see how well particular saddle solutions work (or don’t work) for different types of horses over time.

The most deep-down, almost primal assumption among riders is that somewhere in the universe there is a saddle that the rider will absolutely love.  Moreover, this “one true saddle” will be just as brilliant a fit for her horse as it is for her. The corollary to this assumption is that saddles can be customized or custom-made to meet the most exact requirements of the rider without compromising on optimal fit for the horse.  In fact, this is exactly what a “custom saddle” is supposed to achieve (according to this assumption).

In reality, whether the craftsmanship of a saddle is exquisite or gross, the actual technology is similarly crude, about on par with furniture, which varies greatly in refinement, but not in basic concept.  In saddles there is a single, shared bearing structure (the tree), with a seat on top and panels underneath.  Since all the pattern pieces have to meld harmoniously to the shape of the tree above and beneath, the reality is that it isn’t always possible to achieve a particular rider feel without affecting horse fit.

So, here’s the nub of it: do you, dear reader, want a saddle that is designed from the rider down to the horse, or from the horse up to the rider? That should be a rhetorical question, but sadly it isn’t. There are any number of saddles on the market that are immensely popular with riders precisely because they are designed so well for human appeal.  Apparently it’s not too hard to convince people that the saddles they love best for themselves will also do justice to their horses.

Tags: horse fit, rider fit, saddle design, saddle fit, saddle fitting, saddle technology

The Seven Deadly Rules of Saddle Fitting

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 | saddle fitting | No Comments

Part 1 – “Fan of the F-Word”

If I ruled the world of saddle fitting, I would decree that everyone who buys a saddle – and certainly anyone who fits or sells saddles – should have at least some clue as to what sort of bearing structure is sandwiched between the seat and the panels of the saddle in question.  It’s really critical to know something about this, but it’s shockingly rare.

Instead, people obsess over what is visually accessible to them – like whether the angle on the gusset of a wool-stuffed panel precisely matches the contour of the horse’s back while he is standing in the cross-ties half-asleep and the saddle is unloaded with a rider. Or whether a tube of chapstick comes to an uneasy rest in what might conceivably be interpreted as precisely the “right place” on the seat of the saddle.

Sometimes it makes me want to shriek, “Lipstick on a pig, people!” embellishing the cry, maybe more than once, with the gerund form of a very satisfying four-letter Anglo-Saxon word, for effing emphasis. › Continue reading

Tags: saddle fitting, saddle fitting rules, saddle tree

The learning curve is bell-shaped

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | saddle fitting | 1 Comment

I just returned (well, three weeks ago) from a trip south to do a saddle fitting clinic and teaching seminar.  While there, I spent a couple of days with one of our long-time clients, a professional rider who is an international-level competitor and trainer.   She was having some training issues with a very talented (and ridiculously charming) young horse who was . . . ah . . . resisting the opportunity to progress to the next level, of which he was certainly capable.  Recently his saddle had also started slipping to one side.

After careful scrutiny of the saddle and the horse moving under saddle, I had no clear idea what to do.   His saddle seemed to fit well, but it was slipping right. We tried him in another saddle.  We tried some other stuff. Long story short: the problem was obvious but the reason for it was not. 

We discussed what mechanical fixes might be applied temporarily to put a patch on the slipping saddle problem, acknowledging that the root cause of the problem would require time and patience to determine. › Continue reading

Saddle Fitting, Scientific Method, and Parabolic Skis

Sunday, December 28th, 2008 | saddle fitting | 5 Comments

I was a long way down the road in this job and had already become a qualified fitter in the UK before I really began to get an inkling of how saddles work below the surface of the panel.  Those of you who have followed the halting progress of these posts will realize by now that I am all for lifting the veil when it comes to revealing the inner fit secrets of a saddle - namely the tree.  I believe that having a grasp of the geometry of a tree  and how it compares to the geometry of a particular horse is a huge step towards understanding the fit considerations of any saddle.

Needless to say, the geometry of trees and the physics of load-bearing structures were never specifically addressed in my training as a saddle fitter, nor have they featured in any significant way in any book or magazine article I have ever read on the subject. › Continue reading

Tags: saddle fitting, saddle trees

The Ice Storm Cometh

Friday, December 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Getting to the barn was a bit of a challenge

I apologize for not posting in a timely way, but we are now back on-line after the ice storm earlier this month that is being described as the worst natural disaster in New Hampshire history.  We had no power or running water for ten days, though we kept toasty through sub zero weather and three snowfalls thanks to our trusty old wood stove, which by itself can heat the whole house and then some.   › Continue reading

Tags: ice storm