Picking The Right Saddle Tree For Fat Or Inshape Horse?

[roperdad]

Wow! What a thread. My opinion is based more on application and expereience than schooling or theory, and it touches on what some previous posters have opined.

My Dad is an old school cowboy. When I was a kid he had one well-made saddle because it was what he could afford (technically trade for, but that is another story). He rode more horses for others and himself than I can enumerate, and he rode a lot. Hours and hours in all kinds of weather and he never had a sore horse or worried if his saddle fit. He swapped blankets quite a little and still cinches a horse tighter than anyone I've ever known. He'd rope bulls if he had to, drag cows out of dams or just sort. He'd loosen his cinches when he got off and pull it down when it was time to go again.

I think the difference is that his horses were always in condition. If they were wore out he swapped horses, but they were all in shape. Fat and/or soft horses are what you tend to see get sore more often than not. On AVERAGE, about any saddle can sore a soft horse, and on AVERAGE about any saddle is fine on a horse that is in good shape.

Different analogy, but an out of shape person can't run a mile in any kind of shoe, but some great runners run in sandals and do very well.

[Denise]

roperdad,

Your post is a great example of why "saddle fit" isn't an issue for most working cowboys. They start with a well made saddle - the best they can afford at the time - knowing how important that is. They ride enough that they ride well - quiet in the saddle, not bouncing all over the place. They know how to use padding properly and take care of it, changing and cleaning as necessary. They take care of their horse - loosening cinches when taking a break, "airing out their back" or unsaddling over lunch to give the horse a break. They ride in shape horses that are generally pretty close in body type. Round, mutton withered horses don't make it long on a real ranch string. And if they have to ride an out of shape horse to get them in shape, they notice if anything is starting to go wrong and act on it - changing padding, giving a few days off for an early cinch sore, etc. Put all that basic common sense stuff together and "saddle fit" isn't a problem.

Contrast this with a very common senario, a mid-forties to early fifties woman who finally has the means to own her own horse, which has been a dream of hers since childhood. She still doesn't have time to ride a lot, so her seat isn't great. Average rides last less than an hour. She rides a cheaper made saddle on an overweight horse. And one weekend she does a clinic where she rides her horse for maybe six hours a day - and he comes up sore. I'm not putting down recreational riders. Far from it. They are a major component in the horse industry these days. But we have to face reality. This is the rider scouring the internet for information on "saddle fit" or consulting the "experts" of varying kinds because what else could have made her horse sore but the saddle??? That is how she likely thinks. The other factors aren't even in her thought process.

If you build primarily for working cowboys, "saddle fit" and its myths are pretty much a non-issue. You know what type of trees to order for the body type of horses your customers ride, and they take if from there. But if you build for recreational riders (and that can be a lucrative market) then you will face all sorts of questions arising from the mis-information that abounds and is copied and re-copied throughout the internet. My question is how can we as saddle and tree makers get that "common sense" information out into places that these types of riders can find it?

[Denise]

We agree the there have been "studies" done, but these have been conducted by individuals and companies to support their products or interests and these studies should be questioned. In this case the students that did the study have no dog in the fight.

Regarding the New Mexico State "study" - actually the students did have a dog in the fight. The group that did the study was the New Mexico State Universities National Agri-Marketing Club http://aces.nmsu.edu...ml#anchor_73619 They did it to enter a marketing competition, which they won.

http://www.namablog.org/?cat=277 And the marketing plan based on this "study" has both the name of the company they were marketing and all the names of the NMSU students and advisors on it. http://www.ayurveda....dent/10NMSU.pdf This makes me suspect that in some way the company had a financial interest in the work. How else did they just "happen to be there" to try their saddles on some horses?

So I see this work more as a survey than a study. What did it show? If you test the random combinations of riders, horses and saddles that are used in real life out there, you will find a lot of high pressure areas. I don't think anyone has published that as recorded fact before, though it is one of the things that we all kind of "know" to be true. Now we have proof. But as far as testing anything about saddle fit to determine why the high pressure areas are there and therefore how to correct them - no. This "study" didn't do that.

You asked about other studies being done. I have done a fair amount of digging into the academic literature and I have yet to come up with anything in regards to western saddles. I did hear via the grapevine that some of the studies that ended up being about pads were initially started to be on saddles but they couldn't come up with anything consistent or significant enough to make a proper study so they wrote on what they could, which ended up being the pads. I can't confirm this though. There are a few studies in the literature using the pressure pad testing with English saddles. A 2007 study called "The influence of the width of the saddle tree on the forces and pressure distribution under the saddle" done at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria starts off its abstract with "As there is no statistical evidence that saddle fit influences the load exerted on a horse's back this study was performed to asses the hypothesis that the width of the tree significantly alters the pressure distribution on the back beneath the saddle." In other words, 2007 was the first time it was confirmed that differences in trees really do cause different pressure patterns on the horse! Some of the very few other studies done (all with English saddles) are about the pressure under the saddle during mounting, comparing from the ground versus from a mounting block, or the difference in pressure under the saddle when a rider on a standing horse leans 10 degrees forward or back or to either side. This is the current state of academic research as far as I can find so far.

The truth is, as so many have pointed out, there are just so many variables that to isolate just one and test it is a difficult thing to do. Yet if we are going to find real answers to some of the real questions (what is the best shape for the front bar tip to avoid pressure points during movement? How do different rigging positions really affect the pressure under the saddle?) that is what needs to happen. And as Aggiebraider says, it comes down to who will pay for these studies to be done and done without bias?

Do we need academic studies to build good trees and saddles? Of course not. A lot of us make our living by doing that right now and there are a lot of satisfied riders and horses out there that show that. The places these studies would come in useful are 1.) settling areas where there is disagreement among those of us who build them as to what is best (when we do things differently and they both work) or 2.) having proof to back what we say when in there is contradictory information being touted as "fact". Experience and anecdotes only go so far with some people when what we say is different than someone with Dr. in front of their name.

So if anyone else knows of other studies being done, I would also be very glad to hear about them. The more we learn about what others discover or prove, the more "facts" we know that we can share with others.