One of our customers has been working very hard to find the right saddle for her wide, barrel-shaped young horse. She’s tried a lot of different saddles over the past few weeks and has finally narrowed it down to two. Saddle A looks great in the crossties – it’s balanced, the tree width looks perfect, panel contact is wonderful … but when she rides, the pommel comes up and she winds up in a chair seat; her horse is resistant and his back shows contact under the rear of the saddle but not the front. Saddle B, on the other hand, looks okay until she girths up – then, the pommel drops low and the rear panels actually lift a little off the horse’s back. However, when she rides, she feels balanced, her horse goes well, and the sweat marks on the horse’s back show a nice, even contact. Obviously, she’s leaning toward Saddle B, but is concerned that it seems so unsuitable when she first tacks up – so she e-mailed to ask what she should do.
“Congratulations,” I told her. “You’ve just learned the difference between a static fit and an active fit.”
Let’s begin by defining each. A static fit is done with the horse standing in the crossties. You assess the fit based on the horse’s still back. An active fit involves first doing a static fit, and then putting the fittings on the saddle, getting the rider up, and watching how things look in motion.
A static fit can be perfectly adequate on occasion – for example, if I’m doing a flocking adjustment for one of my regular customers and know for sure that the saddle does fit both horse and rider. However, if you’re saddle shopping, you can’t just pop a saddle up on your horse’s back, ungirthed, and decided if it’s the right fit or not (unless there’s a huge and glaring issue, like the underside of the gullet resting on the horse’s wither). Doing that is a little deciding to marry someone based on their driver’s license photo.
A horse’s back can change quite dramatically when s/he starts to move, and often, the more athletic the horse, the greater the change. I’ve seen saddles that bridged or sat pommel-low on the still horse turn out to be the perfect saddle when the horse started working. To illustrate the point, here’s a link to a video of a young horse being worked in-hand. You can see how much the musculature changes, even when a young horse is doing some very basic stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l–W87fQP9Y&feature=related. (I also think this gent has a lovely way with a horse, and this is a pleasure to watch.)
We need to make sure the saddle suits you, as well. Something that feels comfortable on the buck in the shop can be a different story when you’re actually riding … so you need to try the saddle under “real life” conditions before you decide if it’s going to work for you as well as your horse. You may find that the saddle you liked on the buck is still fine when you’re riding, or you may find that the rise is too steep and you bang your pubic bone on the pommel at the rising trot, or perhaps the cantle is too high and “spanks” you at the canter. . You may also find that a new saddle will alleviate a long-standing fitting issue for you or your horse, only to raise new issues of its own after a couple rides.
You also need the chance to try the saddle under the conditions for which it’s meant: a long trail ride, your 4th Level dressage test, over fences in the arena or on the x-c course. The saddle that feels fine in the arena may become a nightmare after five miles on a hilly trail or after galloping a few fences cross-country – and you need to find that out before you commit to buying it.
Therein lies the rationale behind our one-week trial policy – it’s sort of the Ultimate Active Fit. We want you to be sure you’re happy with the saddle before you plunk down a (sometimes considerable) chunk of change. One of the reasons our shop has lots of lightly-used consignment saddles available is because the consignor didn’t get a chance to really try the saddle before they bought it … and we’d prefer that the same thing not happen to you.