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

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

Saddle Fit: Tree measurements and descriptions

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | saddle fitting | 1 Comment

“Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts.” - Albert Einstein

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. › Continue reading

Tags: saddle fit, saddle fitting, saddle measurement, saddle shape, saddle tree, saddle tree points, saddle trees