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.

Without a doubt, good saddle fitters have valuable insights about fit based on empirical knowledge and experience, and I have been fortunate to have had mentors who are arguably the best saddle fitters in the world.  But here is a source of persistent frustration.  Over the years, I have asked the great ones: how do you actually know that a particular saddle fits the horse?  When it works, how do you know exactly why does it work?  And how do you pinpoint the problem (and the solution) with accuracy when a saddle isn’t right?

In essence, the answer always boils down to: “I’ve done this for decades and I have a good eye.”  Decades of experience and a good eye are invaluable assets to any professional, of course, but I would argue that reliance on conventional wisdom is not a methodology for either research or teaching.

It isn’t much of a leap to accept that behind the conventional wisdom about saddles and how to fit them lies the actual physics of what happens statically and dynamically between the bearing structure of the horse and the saddle.  Yet no one, to my knowledge, is breaking down (or elevating, really) saddle fitting to the level of a systematic, science-based methodology, or even claiming with much conviction that it is important to do this.

Instead, saddle makers and saddle fitters (even acclaimed “authorities” who write books on saddle fitting) seem pretty convinced of how saddles should fit strictly on the basis of the handing down of conventional wisdom, with almost nothing in the way of provable, research-based evidence.  Why?  Because conventional wisdom has been the accepted foundation of saddle fitting for years and years, and shifts in paradigm are never cheap or easy.

Several years ago, I began to get an inkling of how exciting it would be if we, as saddle fitters, could gain greater insight into the engineering aspect of saddle design and fit.  This slim shaft of illumination came not from anyone involved directly with fitting saddles, but from an engineer in an allied industry.  The long and the short of it is that not all conventional wisdom about saddles - even when it is pure and untainted by commercialism - has a solid basis in science.

Saddles are not in any way exempt from the laws of physics and geometry, though on the whole saddle fitters don’t tend to work by that methodology.  Certainly the Pliance research is a major step in that direction, but from what we are able to glean from the trickle of information seeping out, it is still a long way from providing a durable framework for research based in scientific method, let alone the development of a science-based protocol for saddle fitting.

For now it remains commercially convenient for most saddle marketers not to reveal too much specific information about the trees in their saddles, especially since it is hard for any of us to assess the exact shape of a tree inside a saddle when it is essentially invisible.  Instead people tend to fixate on what can be seen on the surface - like the width of the channel, for example, which can sometimes be a very, very misleading indicator of the shape or angles of the actual bearing structure.  Moreover, to a great extent, consumers have shown themselves quite willing  to suspend disbelief and accept at face value some rather questionable claims about how saddles fit and perform.

What if there really is some treasure to be reaped from the application of physics and geometry to the black art of saddle fitting?  What if there is a saddle equivalent of parabolic skis, which is a perfect example of a simple but brilliant application of geometry and physics to a thousand-year old technology.  As any skier will attest, adding side cut to skis - giving a parabolic shape to the edge of the ski as opposed to a straight edge - produces a channeled kinetic energy that creates power through a turn, making it easy for a skier to execute turns that would require a great deal more brute strength on straight-edged skis.

Imagine how much better horses might be able to carry dynamic weight - and never forget the first and great rule of saddle fitting: that horses never evolved to carry weight in the first place - if we could find a way to design trees that can dampen or disperse brutalizing kinetic energy far better than even the best trees can do now.  Maybe it’s a pipe dream anyway, but for sure it will never happen if no one is motivated even to try.

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.  Our region looked like a war zone after heavy shelling by ice artillery, with many roads completely impassable due to thousands of snapped trees and power poles, and hundreds of thousands of homes without power throughout New Hampshire and in pockets of northern Massachussets and eastern Vermont.  By the time power was restored to almost all of the homes in the Monadnock region where we live — which was one of the areas hardest hit by the storm — there were 1250 power crews on the roads, which nearly outnumbers local residents! Just before Christmas we finally had power restored on our road by power line crews who came in from Michigan and Quebec, working tirelessly through unbelievably harsh winter conditions.  We are sincerely thankful to the dedicated line crews who rode to the rescue from all over the United States and Canada, and to the local folks from our community organizations and churches who briskly and cheerfully stepped up to the plate by providing shelter, hot meals all day-every day, hot showers, plentiful clean water for the horses, as well as much-needed camaraderie.  What a moving expression of Garrison Keillor’s closing benediction, “May God grant you the wisdom to live in a small town.”

A small gallery of ice storm photos:

One obstacle after the other

Mt. Monadnock

The horses cannot have been too pleased about this

Canines and feline warm and toasty in front of the wood stove

Llewie modeling his Thermatex rug

We recently received an e-mail from a reader asking if our blanket prices might soon be decreased to account for the recnet change in the exchange rate.  This is an issue that comes up periodically because so many of our products are made in the UK or the EU and the exchange rates do fluctuate.  We have not changed the Thermatex prices for several years despite many currency fluctuations, and we don’t anticipate that we will, though their prices have gone up.  Incidentally, some overseas suppliers denominate their exports in dollars (including Thermatex) so what we pay for the dollar-denominated products changes only when they raise the cost to us of their dollar-priced goods.

Where we are paying suppliers for direct imports in pounds or Euros, we try to set retail prices that allow for a window to both sides for currency-price fluctuations, and we try to calculate that window so that we can absorb some loss on the exchange when the rate swings the other way as well.  And the window certainly does bulge both ways. 

In the world of managed floating rates, a big overnight move by central banks to come in and shore up the Euro or the pound could have a major impact on what we ultimately pay for a pound-denominated order we placed a month ago  Sometimes it works in our favor - sometimes against.  If we could predict this with any accuracy, we could make an overnight fortune in arbitrage and we wouldn’t need to sell tack for a living!

Many of our prices have not changed for several years, and were established when the dollar/pound rate was relatively stable at around $1.75.  But we didn’t alter our dollar prices when the pound floated up to over $2,  because in my estimation, given the fundamentals of the UK economy, that was not a pound price that could stand over a long period of time.  Neither is the current dollar/pound rate likely to remain at this current level before it corrects to something more realistic, where I predict - drum roll. . . I’m about to foretell the future. . . so remember you read it here first. . . I predict - that over the long term the pound will return to floating somewhere in the vicinity of $1.75. 

But of course I could be hideously wrong about that, which brings me to mention another consideration of why we don’t think that pegging retail prices to short-term fluctuations in the cost of foreign exchange is a good business practice.   The price of foreign exchange is only one of many factors that contribute to the “cost of sales.”  There are other costs that don’t move in lockstep with the fluctuations in the price of currencies, so pegging the price of individual items to exchange rate fluctuations would be a completely unworkable system, especially considering that other components of the cost of sales are independent of the price of foreign currencies.  For example, if UPS imposes a shipping surcharge for fuel (this happens regularly, and it NEVER seems to go down again), we would not consider it good business practice to raise the customer’s price retroactive to the order.  We also have costs of currency conversion involved in transferring payments to a foreign producer, and this doesn’t vary with the price of the currency itself.

Moreover, between the time we place an order and the time we pay for the order, the rate may have caromed all over the place.  It is possible to hedge against this in the forward exchange market, but that too has a cost, somewhat analogous to insurance.  If the price of the pound against the dollar rose during that time, I’m pretty sure the customer who placed the order would not be happy to pay a higher price than what she was quoted to begin with. 

I hope this explains why we don’t rush to either raise or lower prices with short-term fluctuations in exchange rates.  Again, I may be all wrong in my reasoning, but it is something we cope with on a significant scale with foreign producers, and whether they absorb the risk/reward of currency price fluctuations or we do, it cuts both ways.  Not all of them denominate their exports in their own currency.  Some years ago, when we were paying a dollar price to one of our overseas suppliers that was established at an unsustainably high pound rate, we “lost” many thousands of (potential) dollars over the course of a year when the dollar gained dramatically (though temporarily) in value.  The dollar prices we paid for this suppliers exports were not adjusted to reflect this at the time.  Put another way, the supplier made an enormous windfall gain at our expense by NOT altering a too-high dollar price for its exports to reflect a correction in the exchange rate.  Our losses were only paper losses — a windfall that was realized by them rather than by us.  Their gains were real ones.  Ultimately, however, I don’t think this necessarily proved to be a profitable decision for them in the long term, but that’s a hard and complex call to make.

Bottom line:  As if the business of saddle fitting weren’t complex enough, the business of business is no cakewalk either.   My motto (with a nod to Calamity Jane in her Deadwood incarnation): “Every day takes figuring out all over again how to survive.”

This saddle was custom-made for this horse. The other saddle was off the rack at half the price. You be the judge of which one is the better fit.

 
As the saddle biz has become more of a standardized national industry rather than a small-scale craft (think Starbucks v. the local, homegrown coffee shop), I would say that there is less genuine variety in they type of saddles that are commonly available.  In my observation, most of the major producers and “custom-made” brands tend to feature saddles that are quite similar to one another in basic tree type.   This is because they make what they think riders want, which makes perfect sense from a business viewpoint.  There is no doubt that consumer trends are a powerful driver in any market.
 
Ironically, the UK is a very small country with a much smaller riding population than ours, but it offers a vastly greater number of genuinely different saddles for horses and riders to choose from.  There are scores of excellent small saddle makers that most readers will never have heard of, and the variety on offer there is almost unimaginable to us in our vast, diffuse market where a handful of recognizable name brands predominate. 
 
So…how does this help our frustrated reader?
 
The first cause for hope is that in my experience, if a rider can find a saddle that truly fits her horse and allows the horse to perform optimally, the rider nearly always develops a love for the saddle.  I don’t exactly know how this works, but I can assure you that time and time again, riders who have bought a particularly well-fitting saddle for the sake of the horse – even if it wasn’t exactly “the feel” they thought they wanted for themselves - have reported back after a few months that they now love the saddle and can’t imagine going back to what they used to ride in.  I have no exact explanation for this, but since I frown darkly upon magical thinking, let’s call it the horse/brain/body nexus.  (Hey, work with me here! This really does happen.)
 
The second reason for hope is that alternatives to what you have already tried, Firedrake, are out there.  In their own little way, some of these small British independent saddle makers that have little or no name recognition here are making in-roads and developing practically a cult following of new converts to the old way of doing things.  Interestingly, many of the fit solutions for the deeply frustrated are to be found in old-time trees that have been in use for decades but have largely been supplanted in “modern” saddles by the trendy newer styles that (I think) are often much more appealing to riders than to horses.

I have a theory about this, having to do with the fact that in the olden days, before we had equine steroid injections and a vast toolbox of other high-tech treatment options for sore horses, more attention was paid tobuidling the saddle from the horse up to the rider.  Nowdays the first step in the process is generally for the rider to choose a saddle she likes, and then…something apparently magical takes place behind the scenes that can transform any saddle she chooses into a saddle that is highly suitable for the horse she rides. 

In any case, Firedrake, I would suggest you make a plan for ordering priorities in your search.  First, try to identify what sort of saddle options are available in the wider world of saddles outside the majors that might fit your horse.  You can save an awful lot of trial and error if you can can get expert advice about what specifically you should be looking for — local help if possible; long distance if necessary.

When you have identified one or more saddles that the horse is comfortable with, figure out what would absolutely have to be different for you to ride comfortably and effectively in the saddle.  Your saddle fitter doesn’t have to be a saddle maker, but the better he or she understands the technical trade-offs involved in the design technology of saddles, the better shot you have at getting the array of features you feel you need for yourself once the horse is sorted. 

Lastly, if you can find something that works well for your horse, perhaps you should consider making a temporary accommodation with something like a pro-lite seat saver, and think of a horse-friendly saddle as a temporary solution that will buy you time to find something else that might be the perfect fit for you too.  Also, you should know that you are by no means alone.  I’m sure every saddle fitter on earth has clients who have suffered all manner of bruising in the saddle. 

And if all else fails, you can always switch to a side saddle.  It looks very romantic in the right outfit, and you are guaranteed not to have the same set of problems you are having now!

These photos are clear examples of conflicting philosophies of saddle design:    

I find it extraordinary that there can be such divergence of opinion about some of the most fundamental aspects of correct saddle fitting.  On several occasions, I have had the opportunity to hear presentations by well-known luminaries in the field who have developed their own brands based on particular design concepts.  I have tried to be as objective as possible in evaluating what I understand their approach to be, and to be open-minded to new concepts that might help me to be a better saddle fitter. 

I haven’t always been disappointed.  The WoW saddle, for example, which is based on design technology that is entirely different from what we use in conventional saddle fitting, is mind-blowing; it’s conceptually ingenious; and as some of you know, we really tried to make the WoW product work for us and for our clients, but alas, the stars did not align.  I have often described WoW as a different paradigm in saddle fitting, but that’s not really accurate.  It is in fact a radically different technological means to the same conceptual end.  The path we have gone down instead is to seek out a wider variety of conventional saddles with good fit features.

The incredible thing to me is that clearly not every one in the professional community can agree even broadly on what good fit means!  According to conventional wisdom (by which I mean the teachings of the UK’s Society of Master Saddlers and the schools they have influenced), it means to achieve the least pounds per square inch of pressure by using a tree/panel configuration that will distribute the rider’s dynamic weight as evenly as possible over the muscular bearing area of the horse’s back.  In other words, you pick a suitable shape of tree in a suitable width, then you cushion and balance it with a suitable panel.  Cushioned, even weight distribution, like a well-fitting pair of athletic shoes: this is how I think it’s meant to work.

Not everyone is in agreement, however, and I have often come away from these presentations convinced that if the presenter’s approach is the right one, then mine has to be wrong.  Of course I don’t think I am wrong, but I’m not positive.  What if they’re right and I’m wrong?  Why can’t we know this? 

These photos prompt the question:  Which of these is a better way to do panels?

Thanks to Pliance, the technology is available to test these duelling design theories head-to-head.  But one thing’s for sure: it ain’t going to happen until consumers force the issue.  I don’t see many saddle companies lining up to put their product to the science-based test.  I understand why; it could be really scary.

Even if a more objective means of measuring our success in getting an optimal saddle fit were readily available, there would still be commercial constraints in the production and marketing of saddles that complicate this effort.  But I’ll save that for next time.

Although centimeter measurements are a common means of comparing one saddle to another, in reality this means of describing the fit of a saddle is about as useful and as accurate as describing the fit of the saddle by saying, “It’s brown.”

A schematic is helpful in comparing the shape of trees

If I knew the centimeter measurements on all of the trees we use (which I don’t), I’m afraid that information wouldn’t help much in comparing the fit of one tree to another tree.   The overall shape and fit considerations of a saddle cannot be accurately expressed as a single measurement, either as a distance between the tree points or as a nominal standard such as “medium” or “wide.”

We don’t know how this bizarre idea ever got started of measuring tree points, but it is a bit like buying a pair of pants on the basis of how long the leg is, regardless of the actual size of the garment or the measurement of the waist and hips.  The measurement you are asking for – the distance between the bottom of the tree points – could be a completely misleading indicator of the actual fit.

Because these measurements are taken at the base of the tree points, if the points are longer on tree A than on tree B, that absolute distance will be larger on the tree with longer points; but the actual fit on the horse will be narrower.  You might very well get a larger cm measurement on a narrower, Thoroughbred-type tree because of its longer points than on a warmblood tree with short stubby points.   Obviously this obscures the real picture about which is more suitable in fit for rounder, wider-bodied horses.

The geometry of trees is more complex than many people realize

The only circumstances in which a comparison of centimeter measurements between trees might be a remotely useful indicator of comparative fit would be the comparison of a single type of saddle built on a single type of tree, whose “width” variations derive solely from pushing the tree points out to widen the tree and pinching them in to narrow it.  In reality, the whole geometry of the tree is critical, and centimeter comparisons between trees are much less helpful than having a good understanding of the shape and fit considerations of a particular tree.

This is not, by the way, something that saddle marketers are falling all over themselves trying to educate the consumer about, as it is vastly more commercially convenient to allow people to believe that every manufacturer can fit every horse with just a small handful of tree options, or with one synthetic tree that can be “adapted” to fit any horse.

If I ruled the world of saddle fitting, I would encourage consumers to make probing inquiries about the shape of the trees in the saddles under consideration, and whether the overall shape of a particular tree is going to be a suitable match for their horse’s bearing structure.  If told that the tree can be manipulated to fit any shape, I would politely request proof of this — and ask for an opportunity to look at the tree so that some comparison can be made of how suitable the shape of the tree is to the shape of the back it is going on.

Maggie and Fergus addressing the issues of logic, fact, and gardening.

“Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.” - Mason Cooley

Before I was a saddle fitter, I was a career Foreign Service Officer, trained in international economics.  Since almost nothing ever works as it theoretically should in economics, and since no one seriously expects that it will, economists are rarely blamed when they don’t get it right.   This is not so with saddle fitting.   People who seek help from saddle fitters expect that they know what they are doing.   They generally expect that the experience will result in something positive, a lasting solution for themselves and their horses, notwithstanding the fact that saddle fitting, even at its most successful, is fundamentally an exercise in damage control.

A significant complication in this process is that equus and homo sapien are two quite disparate species, each with its own particular set of ergonomic requirements.  Yet they must share the same piece of equipment, share the same bearing structure from opposite sides, and — however improbable this might be sometimes — it has to fit them both.

Narrow twist, wide horse, wishful thinking

An example of a total mismatch between shape of horse and shape of tree

Riders of wide horses may not always like the shape of saddles that really fit them

I won’t understate how frustrating it can be for a saddle fitter to find a saddle -– or several saddles –- that are an excellent fit for a hard to fit horse shaped like a melon on legs, only to have the tiny lady rider who owns this equine beer barrel reject every single saddle that fits her horse because she prefers a saddle that is completely unsuitable for his actual shape.  The conversation often goes like this:

Horse Owner:  “I’ve tried quite a few saddles, and this is the first time something has really fit Bon Bon without surfing up his neck.”

Saddle Fitter:  “Yes, well, typically trees designed for Highland and Cob body types do fit butterballs like Bon Bon pretty well.”

Horse Owner:  “So I’m glad your job is that easy.”

Saddle Fitter, nodding agreeably but muttering sotto voce:  “Yeah, easy.  And for my next trick, I will balance the federal budget, solve the credit crisis, and bring about world peace.”

Horse Owner, plowing on without a pause:  “But you can see I’m just swimming in these size 2 breeches (faux self-effacing giggle), and Bon Bon is so wide; obviously I can only ride him comfortably in a saddle with a narrow twist.”  (Translation: “I am a very small person who has bought a spherical horse that is entirely unsuitable in body type for my requirements, and I’m only willing to ride him in a saddle that makes me feel like I’m on a narrow, slab-sided horse instead of the shape he really is.”)

I encounter this sort of dilemma ridiculously often, and I have found that suggesting to the rider that she should perhaps find a more suitably shaped horse is almost never appreciated.

The key is the tree; it's the part you can't see

This blog is about saddle fitting, or at least my experience of saddle fitting.  It is the product of time in the field and in the factory, seeking, testing, gritting teeth, frothing with excitement, sucking it up in the face of failure, using foul language, getting a little closer, losing the trail, stumbling upon the right trail again; all illuminated over time by enough enlightening “ah-ha!” moments to keep the quest fresh for me year after year.  If you have any questions you would like to see addressed in the blog, please e-mail me at info@advancedsaddlefit.com, and be sure to include Blog in the subject line.

I hope this will become a forum for the lively exchange of ideas, a place for other professional saddle fitters to share the benefits of collective experience, and a destination for the curious consumer looking for a more probing treatment of saddle fitting than the cursory guidelines listed in “The Seven Points of Saddle Fitting” (or the 10 points, or 14.6, or any prime number higher than 23, depending on who is composing the list).

Early in my saddle-fitting career, back when I was tied-in to selling and fitting a single brand of saddle, I began to realize that, without some knowledge of the range of technical capabilities and constraints inherent in the design technology of all saddles, my practical understanding of saddle fitting and of fit solutions for horses would remain cripplingly limited.

As a working professional in this field, I spent far too long wondering in intense frustration why a “wide” saddle that was nominally suitable for a “wide” horse, and appeared by conventional assessment a reasonable fit for that horse, simply would not stay put when ridden, no matter what I tried; or why some horses with identical wither tracings couldn’t even remotely fit into the same saddle; or why the fit of custom saddles “made to template” from a wither tracing or other careful measurements of the equine back turned out quite often to be disastrous on the horse. 

It didn’t take long to realize that there were an awful lot of horses I had no particularly good solution for, even in the premium range of saddles I worked with.  Often, even when I felt that I had the right width and fit for the horse in the saddle the rider had chosen, I was still forced to rely on crafty manipulation of the flocking (I was taught to rely on finicky flocking adjustments) to try to correct problems with the saddle’s balance and stability.

Once upon a time I would have tried to "fix" this problem by stuffing the back panel to level this saddle.

I lived in dread of delivering a special-order saddle that was supposed to fit the horse, indeed must fit the horse, and damn well would fit the horse if I had to flock those panels for hours, to within an inch of their lives.  Something about the whole methodology did not seem right, not to mention how stressful it was to have such a limited range of choices to work with, when saddle fitting is a complex business.

Strangely, I was not very successful in getting convincing answers on this side of the Atlantic to my questions about how saddles are actually supposed to fit and how to get better at fitting them.  So I decided to go straight to the source - to Walsall, in the region of England known as the Black Country.

My home away from home in Walsall

These days Walsall is not actually black, as it apparently was during the Industrial Revolution when it was thoroughly coated in soot; nowadays it’s grimy gray.  Neither is it “the country” by any stretch, and certainly not horse country.  One saddle maker admitted that the closest he gets to a live horse in an average month is when he walks down to the corner betting shop to put a wager on the fifth at Cheltenham. 

But Walsall is the saddle-making center of England, and a mecca for anyone interested in learning about saddles.   For me it continues year after year to be the classroom, the hall of learning, the place to go for the conceptual insight and technical knowledge that underpin my lab work in the field, fitting saddles to horses.

It’s hard for me to imagine how I could become an educated saddle fitter without spending time with saddle makers and tree makers there.  And this is quite odd because almost any saddle maker you talk to in Walsall will give you a completely different story about the right way to do things.

I began to make the pilgrimage to Walsall frequently, to badger saddle makers, more experienced saddle fitters, and tree makers, crassly mining their collective centuries of experience for a fleck or two of precious insight.  Eventually I endured the Society of Master Saddler’s week-long ordeal required as preparation for the assessment to become official as a professional saddle fitter.  (Tip for those of you who would go down this road: If you want to pass the QSF assessment, think about what happens in your real life as a saddle fitter, then say or do the opposite.)

The UK’s Society of Master Saddlers is a sufficiently interesting body that it probably merits its own daytime TV drama.  I’m not going to get bogged down there, however; I’m going to restrict myself to writing about only some of the many aspects of this subject that I feel insufficiently knowledgeable to discourse upon.

In any case, the SMS is the only body in the world that confers internationally-recognized professional saddle fitting credentials.  Becoming officially qualified and eligible for membership in this august body as a professional saddle fitter isn’t necessarily a token of great achievement in this field (trust me on that!), but it is a start: a platform of basic knowledge and procedure, and a useful entrée into the clubby world of British saddle makers.  Making the effort to become qualified (it’s not a small one) scores at least a little street cred for an outsider in Walsall.

As part of my quest for a better range of saddle fit solutions and a deeper understanding of the underlying physical principals in play, I have sought the counsel of many experts in the UK’s saddle making industry over the years.

One was the managing director of a large British saddle tree manufacturer.  An absolutely lovely man, to whom I am immensely grateful for helping me to understand the critical basics of tree design and technology, I hasten to assure him should he hear of this that I was not at all offended by his gentle observation that my grasp of the geometry of tree design remains rudimentary, notwithstanding repetitive tutorials on the subject.   Picture showing two trees together   Two trees; so alike, and yet so vitally different.

If this leaves you wondering whether you are reading a blog on saddle fitting written by someone not particularly well qualified to write it, I’m afraid the answer to that is yes.  Unfortunately, whoever should be writing this instead of me hasn’t done it yet.  Had this knowledge, this deeper way of looking at saddle technology and saddle fit, been readily available when I started in this job, I think that I would have been quite a bit better at it, a lot sooner.

What I have found instead is that, for a variety of reasons, information about saddle fitting that goes beyond unsubstantiated marketing claims and old wives tales isn’t easy to come by.  Even books and articles that help readers identify obvious faults in saddle fit often fail to offer much help or insight into specific solutions.  A genuine variety of good fit solutions for the vast array of different horses we ride these days isn’t easy to come by; but there is a lot to know that will at least help establish a base line for the way we think about fitting saddles.

I hope you will all join in this discussion and bring with you the insight of horse owners, saddle fitters, and others dedicated to doing the best they can for the horses they own or work with.

When the saddle fitter calls

I had a chat this afternoon with one of our clients in another part of the country about the impending visit of a saddle fitter to her barn. She is pondering whether she should sign up for an evaluation of her saddle. “Do you think they can make an objective judgment,” she wonders, “or will they just try to sell me a different saddle?”  Well, I can’t possibly answer that objectively myself.  I do know that good fit occurs along a continuum.

If the fit is perfect in one phase of motion, it may be much less perfect at some other moment. If the fit is great when the horse is at full fitness, it may not be so good when the horse has had time off.  Though a saddle may fit well enough with a light rider, the panels may not support the tree efficiently with a much heavier rider on board.  The interface between the horse and the saddle changes all the time, and since there is no absolute standard of what is good enough, we are all left with only judgment and educated guesses, really.

Moreover, where a particular horse needs to be on the fit continuum probably varies from time to time, and it certainly varies among populations of horses.  Picture the school horses who work long hours every day, year after year, with every sort of unbalanced rider, often in a saddle that is probably far from a perfect fit.  If they feel it, they don’t necessarily show it. Some high performance horses work for years in what I might consider to be devices of torture and show no obvious ill-effects in soundness or performance.  Other horses are quick and graphic in demonstrating likes and dislikes in saddles.  Some fail to perform well in any saddle, often because there is an underlying issue of pain, which could originate anywhere in the body from teeth to tail. There is only one gigantic, total truth in saddle fitting, and it is this:

Thirty million years of evolution did not design the equine back to be load-bearing, and structurally horses’ backs are not well-suited for carrying the weight of a rider. Period.

So there’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room, which we will all now ignore. That is the first great truth of saddle fitting, and the second is like unto it: No saddle can ever approach a perfect fit, for once the horse takes a step forward, the shape of the back will change, and continue to change throughout the range of motion, and beyond that, throughout the horse’s life. Imprint these truths on your minds, dear readers, and go with at least a little skepticism into the business of having your saddle “re-fit” to your horse.

You may have to sit on many saddles before you make your selection

You may have to sit on many saddles before making your final selection.Since far be it from me to say that the opinion of a well-qualified and deep-thinking saddle fitter has no value, here is a list of some sample topics you might want to have covered in this encounter:

What are the fundamental fit characteristics of my horse in terms of his body shape?

What sort of tree shape would suit him best and which saddles do you know of that are built on those trees? How closely does my existing saddle fulfill these requirements?

If there are identifiable flaws in the fit of my saddle, how feasible would it be to rectify these problems, and what are the limitations of the solutions you propose?  For example, if you are going to address this problem by flocking my saddle, how much capacity for genuine reshaping does this particular panel really have?

How long can I expect a correction to the wool filling to last before it needs to be repeated? Would I be able to extend this by having you line the panels with felt?

Do you expect to be able to achieve a better solution working inside the panels than what could be accomplished using a therapeutic pad or correction pad? If so, why?

Please ask your saddle to explain in detail how he proposes to transform this tree to that tree by putting it in his press

If you are proposing to re-fit my saddle to my horse by altering the tree itself, brace yourself, you have some explaining to do. How exactly will you alter the tree? How can you be sure that the tree will be altered symmetrically if you can’t take it out of the saddle and measure it on a gauge?

How exactly will the saddle change in shape and function? What will happen to the tension on the springs and the rivets in the head and gullet plates? The angle on the stirrup bars? If you change the width of my tree, will this mess up the spacing on my panels?

Can you imagine a scenario in which you might turn a good saddle that doesn’t happen to fit this particular horse into a weird saddle that will not fit any horse properly?

Hmmm. I can imagine that.

More about trees

Wood spring trees are made by bending laminated wood strips around a form that looks like a horse’s back.  The wood spring tree takes on the shape of the form it is built on.  The shape is then re-inforced by steel bands and a head plate and gullet plate.

There are many other factors beside nominal tree width that affect the fit. Even a tree of suitable shape cannot do the job alone. No matter how much you narrow this tree, something more will be needed to prevent injury to this horse.

Synthetic trees are injection molded, using a plastic-like, nylon composite material.  The material for the tree is poured into a mold and it comes out in one solid piece.  Then its width at the head is established by pushing the points of the tree outward or inward.

In the manufacture of synthetic trees — which dominate in the lower half of the saddle market and are becoming increasingly prevalent even in the rarefied top end — the initial investment in a mold to produce a tree is expensive, but the production cost per tree is low.  This is one of several potent disincentives to producing saddles on many different shapes of tree for many different shapes of horse.

Typically there is a great deal more variety of shapes commercially available in wood spring trees, but this doesn’t mean that any individual saddle manufacturer uses a wide variety of different tree shapes.    From a production standpoint, this is a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface.

For reasons that are quite valid financially if not always beneficial in practical terms, many saddle manufacturers are producing on a single type of tree, which is then adjusted to different nominal widths.   The fundamental point is that the overall shape of the tree is what it is –  variations in width do not necessarily correlate to variations in the whole shape of the tree as the arms (tree points) are widened or narrowed and the nominal tree widths increases or decreases.  Inconveniently, the geometry of trees is actually a lot more profound than that.

Whether or not a particular manufacture chooses to build saddles on a wide variety of tree shapes, the universe of choices in wood spring trees is greater than the choices available in synthetic trees.   Where synthetic trees are used, their selling point seems to be that the material they are made from is more malleable, and therefore it is easier to make serial adjustments to the “width” of the saddle – provided that one is content with defining fit as being all or mostly about the fit through the tree points and not the overall shape and fit of the whole tree.

Simply widening this tree will still not make it a suitable shape for this horse.

Unfortunately, analyzing the suitability of tree shape is not something that figures prominently in many discussions of saddle fitting.  Trees can be either too curvy or too flat for a particular horse’s back, or the rails can be set too steeply and too close together or too flat and too wide apart for a particular horse, all of which can have a profound effect on the horse’s comfort and the evenness of the weight distribution.