11/17/2020
While this talks about Western Saddles, the same is true for english saddles. Don't be fooled by fancy looking, plushed up english saddles. Look for craftsmanship of trusted brands like Stubben and Passier who have made saddles that fit horses and riders for over 100 years. It's much better to invest your money in a used, high quality saddle than to waste it on a brand new saddle not made by a knowledgeable craftsmen.
I belong to several saddle buy-sell groups online.
For the most part, the ranch folks and working cowboys get it. Their saddles need to fit their horses like the nesting of two spoons. It’s just that simple. This interface between the underside of the saddle—that dark and mysterious place where too few people care to go—must, as best we can, have a maximum surface bearing weight, touching, meeting, matching up with the topside of the horse’s entire back. Ranch saddle ads talk in terms of degree of angle to the bars, the amount of rock, of twist, of flare and the length of the bars in total.
The bars, of course, are the underpinning of a western tree, the part that actually needs to match your horse's back.
Today’s western performance shoppers are an enigma to me. They are shopping primarily name brands and how each saddle is finished on top. The terms ‘it fits every horse it’s put on’ and ‘must or must not be roughout’ or ‘must have a deep pocket’ are key phrases in most ads. In addition to the name brand many buyers are looking for, is their need for a specified colour, cantle style and finish. None of which, if we’re honest, is of any benefit or interest to the horse.
Too many buyers and sellers are worried about gullet measurements. Problem is, the random number coming out of a saddle's gullet doesn't mean a thing. The raw tree, yes; the built saddle, not so much.
Nobody considers that gullet measurements, indeed all inside width measurements, are meaningless as they are skewed incredibly by how one measures… where we might hold the tape or ruler… how the skirts were plugged and lined when built... where the conchas and strings were set when the saddle was made (which is a random placement). They solve the fit issue by requesting a particular measurement or sending ‘withers tracings’. These are meant in good faith but both can be twisted by how they are made and where the tracing is placed upon the horse. Unfortunately, a withers tracing or gullet measurement is focusing on one small area back of the horse's shoulders. It disregards the entire surface area of where the horse will be carrying the rider's weight!
If one really needs hard, fast measurements, the Dennis Lane fit cards are probably the most affordable and straightforward way to go… provided both the buyer and seller have a set to go by and understand how to use the cards.
We used to generalize by saying that a saddle tree had “full Quarter Horse bars” for the rope horse crowd, or “semi Quarter Horse bars” for the cutters and reiners. Even these definitions are being used less and less, as sellers of performance saddles simply say that they have a cutter, reiner, ranch cutter, barrel or cowhorse saddle to sell of a particular brand name...
Bottom line? The saddle we choose MUST FIT THE HORSE first, then ourselves and the discipline, second. This sentence deserves a re-read! While it may seem overly simplistic, I’ll argue for it, all day long.
I’ve been looking at updating one of my working saddles recently. I’m looking for a cowhorse rig that’s a wider fit than are most small cow-bred horse saddles. I always have a variety of trees on hand to work for the wide-ranging horses that come into my program. Other than that, I’m keeping an open mind.
I’ve tried a few secondhand, big name saddles out on my horses. I’ve got to say, as a rider who’s ridden primarily custom-built saddles, I am not impressed.
I am seeing saddles built with far too much rock—literally, the tree is shaped like the runner underneath a rocking chair—yet they are meant to use on young-to-middle-aged performance horses. These western event horses generally have quite flat, wide and short backs. When I test these saddles for fit, they literally rock back and forth on a central point directly under the rider’s weight. While a boon to a sway-backed animal, these saddles are an entirely wrong fit for the average horse.
“But that rock is there to free up the shoulders and get some ‘lift’ on stops,” I am told. Nope, I’m not buying it.
We can usually recognize these high-rock saddles by the raised front ends and extremely deep ‘pocket’ in the seats. These saddles have an outline that in no way mirrors the average topline of any sort of horse. However, they can be a Godsend to those with swayed (dropped or low) backs. I happen to use one of these saddles on my twenty-seven-year-old campaigner and while it works very well on him, a horse who is prone to ‘bridging’ issues, I have learned the hard way that this saddle will sore every other horse that I own!
Costing between $3000 to $8000, so in no way cheap, I am seeing a majority of off-the-rack western performance saddles made with precious few time-honoured saddle-making skills.
Buckles that in no way fit the width of the strapwork. P***y (soft, wrinkly) leather used as a cost savings. Bulky, unevenly installed riggings. Edges not finished well nor skived-down to lie comfortably. Ginormous, shoddy stitching. Clicker-stamped pieces, rather than cut out, edged and carved. Back skirts that are not blocked or shaped to fit any kind of real, live horses. Worse, of the four used saddles I’ve tried, two did not sit straight when viewed from behind! Whether they were built on warped trees or have been assembled haphazardly, they were sitting lopsided on each of my training horses. I’m seeing one-size-fits-all thinking, with an alarming lack of workmanship.
The problem with all saddles is that the most important parts—the rideability and life-saving aspects—are usually hidden to the naked eye. So often, we have to trust that time and money-saving shortcuts weren’t made that will cost us dearly. Welcome to the production line.
I’m learning that even loosely bled-on and light-duty saddle strings tell a story about what is going on underneath an otherwise pretty topside. If this one little detail was skimped on, how do I know if the rigging has been correctly installed? If the stirrups haven't been correctly turned, even in a new rig, you can almost bet it's a low-quality saddle. A good maker wouldn't let a rideable saddle go out the door without having this safety feature done right. Unfortunately, production line companies are figuring this out and putting a twist in, thinking it will make silk purses out of sows ears. The same goes for 'silver'. If a good saddle-maker has to honour his client's tight budget, he'll not put silver trimmings on, rather than use cheap crap. But this is all just what we can see up front.
In one lightly-used cowhorse saddle I tried, the near and off front cinch rings were almost 1.5” out from being true. No wonder it was 'soring' the seller's horse. I’m also skeptical, seeing that all new performance saddles being built are 100% full double-rigged. This means that the front cinches lie directly under the front fork of the saddle, a position that has long been proven to sore up most horses over time. I was able to find only one production-line maker who offered a 7/8ths rig… but nobody asks why this is no longer the norm.
As far as in-skirt riggings go, there is absolutely nothing wrong with them, done well. Problem is, you or I can’t see, at a glance, how this saddle was screwed together. If a saddle is missing good workmanship on the top, however, you can be fairly certain that the rigging isn’t going to be well-installed.
Instead, we worry about whether a saddle is a nice colour and if the skirts are a trendy shape... but nobody is noticing trees that are sub-par, molded fibreglass or merely varnished wood. Most barrel saddles have been made smaller and lighter by shortening the bars of the tree behind the cantle. Problem is, from the horse's point of view, working comfort comes from increasing the surface area, which lowers ‘pounds per square inch’. Instead, the saddles have been designed to stop short, with a pressure point right behind the rider.
I guess what I’m saying is this. Beware. Train your eye to recognize poor saddle fit—and this will take time, mentorship and confidence—and to know when you are seeing inferior workmanship. To my eye, too many of these new saddles are bordering on being unsafe, not to mention, purgatorial for the horses forced to pack them. I’m not going to name names here, as we all have our pet pans and faves. Yes, some of the worst offenders are mass-produced saddles featuring a real person’s name in the maker’s stamp.
If you want to start educating yourself on what makes a good saddle, look to the small-town, bricks-and-mortar shop saddle-makers... particularly those located in the epi-centre of your chosen sport.
These guys and gals build saddles to work for the long haul, not against you or your horse. They stand behind their product and most convincingly, very few of them charge more for a custom-built rig on the sort of tree you require—with the type of rigging and free-moving stirrups you need—than do the assembly-line brand-name makers. In an effort to keep their sales up, many of the popular production-line saddleries have added the word “custom” to their maker stamps. Once you've seen and ridden in the real thing, you'll not be fooled.
The only thing I might add is that our horses have changed shape over time. If you have a good, older saddle or even a great custom rig, be careful that you aren't expecting it to fit on today's rounder, wider horses. I'm finding that the saddle trees of my younger days weren't built at the same angles as the kind of performance horses being bred right now.
Also, if a saddle's overall weight is an issue, then we may need to tweak our saddling technique. Is our horse uncomfortably tall? I don’t think a thing of throwing my saddle on my 15:2 horse but the 17:2 one is a different story. Or, perhaps we're riding a horse too small to comfortably carry us in a full-fledged rig? Regardless, I'm finding that most production-line performance saddles weigh just as much as a custom saddle with a rawhided tree, at about thirty-five pounds.
There is no such thing as 'the saddle that fits everything', nor a mythical saddle that works for all disciplines. You can't rope in a cutter or barrel saddle and you won't be able to use your legs freely or sit the stops in a Wade. Correct padding underneath is a whole other issue and can only be a temporary help, to a point.
Bottom line, if you ride any western discipline and are looking to upgrade or find a better-fitting saddle, more than ever, I’d urge you to start measuring your horses... buy from someone who will welcome you to carry out 'in the flesh' trials... start learning everything you possibly can about saddle fit... and ask around for the good makers in your area. These are the people who build saddles for a living, who understand how to keep horses sound and who recognize the different needs in western sport and of today's specialized horses. When money is an issue, buy top-of-the-line used, rather than so-so new.
Get ready to shop around.
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