Advice Welcome: We are having a TERRIBLE time fitting Kasper to saddles because of his unique shape. We take pride in that in our herd of trail horses - being ridden 3 hours a day by novice riders we never have had a single issue of shoulder and saddle sores - except for Kasper :( Kasper is mutton withered (low withers, is downhill, narrow framed with a narrow rib cage, and has an incredibly steep shoulder angle. In fact his shoulders are so steep that instead of tucking in below withers during the leg swing the points of the shoulders actually stick out about 1/2. So, most mutton withered horses it seems are also WIDE. As a result those saddles wont work because they drop down at the top of the bars putting most of the pressure directly on the points of his shoulders. To boot, the balance doesnt work and the saddle is downhill and lifts in the back. But, most narrow saddles seem built for incredibly tall withered horses. So, when riding in these you are miles above him and we have issues with slippage. AND because of the way the point of his shoulder is some of these still get in the way of his full leg swing. The trouble we have is particularly with western saddles (the English industry has devised many more compensation padding options, and though I prefer proper saddle fit to pads they have helped). People have suggested flextree saddles, and honestly I have used one on him before; however we simply have too many types of riders riding our horses and the flextree and treeless saddles have ALWAYS slipped for our riders and caused more balance, pain and behavior problems from the slipping than they helped, not to mention liability. We did, however find this pad (pictured) that seems to reduce pressure on the shoulders - enough that we immediately noticed he had more forward movement at the walk when riding.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:39:09 +0000
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