differences between arena saddles for a specific purpose vs. long-day riding saddles

[Blake]

(Moved here by Johanna from the Cantle thread)

As for Joel's talk at the TCA he said he felt a saddle should bridge a little so a horse can round up under neath it. This is not a desireable trait in a usin rig but I believe that if a person were building an areana only type rig you might reconsider, in reining, cutting etc. a horse is constantly underneath himself and his back rounded up quite frequently, The "slight" brigeing effect at this time might work to your benifet. Greg

Greg, You make an excellent point here concerning bridging.

The slight bridging does add some stability to the arena type saddle when a horse is working with a rounded back as long as it is not an end to end type of bridging.This is especially true when cutting. It is important that there is still flare and relief at the bar ends. If done properly you can still achieve plenty of bearing surface without creating excessive pressure points and this can work well for its intended short term use.Too much bridging can actually encourage a horse to drop his back or refuse to round it when there is too much pressure at the tips (rear) of the bars and of course this leads to other issues.

I totally agree with you on the long term daily using rig.

Respectfully

Blake

Hi Everyone

I apologize for hijacking the thread and taking it away from cantles.

Blake

[bruce johnson]

In an effort to keep the cantle thread more focused on cantles, I am opening up this thread to the differences between arena saddles for a specific purpose vs. long-day riding saddles. Obviously the long day saddles have to be able to keep the horse going for all day. The arena saddles may be for the horse who is ridden for a shorter time frame - warm up and 10 minutes of cutting training on cattle, long trot and patterning on barrels, then one run at speed, loping 5 laps then running 8 steers, etc. The arena saddles may have different needs (like the room to round up the back or stop deep) that the guy out gathering and moving cattle may not need or want. One has to provide support, the other needs to not get in the way for the horse first and the rider second. I think we can be general enough to focus on any aspect from trees to seats in this thread.

[Alan Bell]

Ok I may be getting a little off topic but a thread about trees is destined to include horsemanship. There are a bunch of cutters and reiners around these parts. There is a cutting every weekend down the road from me and I go there and I have ridden with some of the folks there and I also did a stint hanging out with the reiners a few years back but they are all about 30 mi. or so from here so I had to let that go. Actually Weatherford Tx is where all the cutters live but Doug Jordan was my neighbor when I first moved here. When a horse "rounds" up or even when it collects it is happening from the rear forward. When they get "catty" they are shooting their hind legs up underneath them. WAY up underneath them and they are rounding their LOWER back just like we do when we tuck our hips. As sophisticated humans we get to where we can hardly do that and have to train to be able to continually tuck our hips into old age. Third world folks squat like that all their lives. But the point I guess I am making is: Where is the "bridging" happening when a horse is standing square? It seems that the bridging is in about the middle of the tree yet the horse rounds from the rear forward so it may not really fill that gap. Cutting is kinda about training the horse to move backward in a round about way. When a horse backs you see the hips drop away from the saddle as the horse rounds. I would love to see a bare tree strapped on to a horse that is trained to sit up. Then the horses back is as round as it can get. Most cutting horses spend a LOT of time being uncomfortable during training. If the bars are bridging and if the horse is not filling that gap then when the horse lowers its front end and its rear legs shoot forward and its hip drop away from the saddle a lot of pressure is going to be placed on the point where the bars are contacting alongside the withers along with the rider pushing on the saddle horn to transfer his weight and momentum through the horses feet. When I watch cuttings that seems to be more of what i see. Maybe I'm just seeing things wrong....again!

Vaya Con Dios, Alan Bell

Ain't no rules; ain't no vows; you can do it anyhow

Bob Marley - Jammin'

[Johanna]

Due to a technical difficulty, Greg's post got glitched:

Alan if I am analyzing this correctly standing flat a cutter should bridge ever so slightly(from the back of the stirrup slot approx. 3 "). When the horse drops his hips this bridge fills as the contact lifts from the rear of the bar pad. At any given time you would be looking at approx. 70% bar contact on a cutter, not an ideal situation but if you were to increase the rock to fill this slight amount of bridge your contact would probably be 50% or so on a cutter at work because as he rounds from the rear forward this will push the back even higher would it not.. The big question is what works best when attaching a semi-rigid form to a flexable form?

Greg, if you post to this thread, I can merge your words into your next post. Sorry it got messed up during the move.

Johanna

[bruce johnson]

Johanna,

Thanks for getting this straightened out.

Greg,

It was me who messed up the move, and lost the name. To err is human, to really screw things up requires Bruce Johnson and a computer.

*Johanna imagines the mayhem that would occur if she were to get on the back of a real horse...and thinks computers are easy compared to what Bruce does...

[Alan Bell]

Got a call from one of my buddies, Jake Wiggins and he had been working with a fellow starting cutting horses. He pointed out that actually a cutter is in that saddle and worked for hours before they are taken in to cut. They may have "the cow worked out of 'em" by loping in a warm up pen for 2 hrs straight! Same with the reiners. So there is not really a "arena saddle" vs "long day saddle" but the back yard horse that only gets ridden lightly by the middle aged mom. They can handle a saddle that bridges. He also pointed out that although cutters talk about 'collecting the horse" it is not "rounding up" in the usual sense. They want the horse to have its face vertical, and turned towards the cow even when the horse is sideways to the cow. They also want it to lift its inside ribcage so it can shoot out the opposite way so it will also need to be rocked back on its outside hind or "sucked up". This is what the cutters call "rounding". So filling that gap caused by bridging is only momentary and MOST of the time the horse will be ridden with the bars bridging. A good example of how uncomfortable the horses are: Jake is kinda like a secret weapon for Punk Carter and a few others out here. While everyone else is loping the snot out of their horses in the warm up pen Jake will be just getting the horse even on both sides. Lightly trotting the horse and stopping it and doing little roll backs and turns while remaining calm and relaxed. The first time he got Punk to not have his "warm up" guys get on this mare right after Jake got finished with them, rather, just let Jake relax it and even it up, it scored it's highest score to date! I think that the concept of having as much bar contact as possible at all times really applies even to "performance" horses and perhaps more so.

Vaya Con Dios, Alan Bell

They make their world so hard; everyday my people are dying!

Bob Marley - One Drop

[greg gomersall]

Another area where a "slight" amount of briding is required is on the Arizona bars some people use on thier trees. Because the arizona bar is only recessed on the front edge of the stirrup slot a little bridge is required to keep the back edge of the stirrup leather from creating a huge knot on the bottom side of the tree bar. The majority of your factory roping saddles use this type of bar. Greg

[bruce johnson]

Greg's post brings up another question. I have been in the roundtables, informal get-togethers, and fitting classes where someone mentions shimming trees on the bottom to improve fit. In Greg's example of the AZ bars, a shim full thickness at the back of the stirrup leather and skived to taper back from there to fill in bridging. Any thoughts? Anybody doing it?

I have done a similar but not quite the same thing on a bronc saddle. This guy had me install two skived plugs in the front of the skirts under the front barpad area. He wanted his second saddle to sit higher on narrower or low fronted horses. Basically I took two full thickness pieces and skived them at the edges , tapered back behind the pad area a bit. Sewed them in between the woolskin and the skirts, and not obvious from looking. It didn't change the specs on the saddle, since we were mostly raising up and not changing where the gullet width is measured.

[greg gomersall]

If you shim the front of a tree up to raise it up are you not in turn forceing the rear tips of the bar down into the horses back? On bronc saddles instead of shiming them up why not run a piece of all-thread thru the fork from side to side and draw the front together. From my experience most of the bronc saddles i have seen or rode tend to spread thru the front after a while anyways. Greg

[bruce johnson]

Greg,

Yes, raising the front up does change the pitch and potentially could cause the rear pads to dig in. This particular tree was pretty flared, and still sitting the tree on my horse with the skirts off and the shims laid in under was not pointed into the horse. That 5/8" or so we raised it really didn't change the back end all that much. I am not sure that it really made a huge difference in how the saddle would ride that much anyway. But, when you feel like your gear is not quite what you think you want, it matters in your head. Two Coke cup piece thicknesses under one stirrup pin as an adjuster, that sort of thing. This saddle was pretty new and not spread, and this kid was #16. He left Cow Palace (before they changed it to a spring rodeo) placing on one, and was on his way to Brookings SD, Florida, and KC. He had a skinny horse in Brookings, and was hungry. Good kid, missed the finals that year, but has made it since.

I am still not sure how gray an area he was in rule-wise. The book really doesn't address it, and the judges I have talked to since have said they probably wouldn't even notice. The rules mainly address the hull.

On another note, I had an email from a guy who only uses 2-1/2" leathers with AZ bars to lessen the lump that a 3" leather extending a little further back could make. He uses 3" leathers on double slotted bars. I can see the logic there, although I am still curious if anyone is shimming the bar bottoms to any extent? Don't be afraid to post directly, folks.

[greg gomersall]

Bruce the arizona bar was developed for the extra strength they would have by not having both cuts in the bar and they allowed for a slight bridge effect to keep the stirrup leather from creating a lump, I don't use this bar but just wanted to point this out. As for the PRCA rule book being vague look at the clause for rigging position. It states that it must be 3/4 rigged and that the front edge of the ring cannot be back of the center of the swell, that is fine on a 15 1/2 or 16 but lookat these 17 and 17 1/2 seats most of these guys are using nowadays. It is mathamaticly impossible to put the rigging in true 3/4 position as the front of the ring would be back of the the swell center. Talk about a contradiction in desription. I talked with some judges at Vegas last fall about this and thier eyes just glazed over. Greg

[bruce johnson]

Greg,

Good point about the rigging position on the bronc saddles too.

I understand about the double cut weakening the bars and the reason for the Arizona bars, especially on the cutting reining saddles with thinner bars. Playing the devil's advocate here for a second. Denise and Rod posted a pic in the tree section of some skirts off a saddle with Arizona bars. There was a definite groove worn in the skirts at the back edge of the stirrup leather. There was no wear or rubbing on the skirts behind that for a moderate distance. Obviously the stirrup leather edge was putting pressure on, and the middle of the bar was bridging enough to not provide much support. Reason enough for me to rethink bar patterns. I know that a lot of swell forks with Arizona bars are cowboying and roping saddles. My rambling brain is thinking these horses would be happier with some support there, either thicker bars built into the rocker for less bridging and a double stirrup slot or a shim on a reline when it is seen? The increased bar thickness would not raise the rider up any more than is already there, it would fill in down below.

[greg gomersall]

Bruce I fully agree with you on the bar design being a poor choice. I've seen them shimed before but even shims cut out of good stock will pack down considerably over time so the question is will they pack down evenly? If one packs a little more than the other the whole saddle will be out of balance. That is one of the things I like about my big splitter, I can level my skirts and my plugs out evenly before I start even though the skirts themselves could pack down unevenly in the bar area over time. Dale Harwood told us at the TCA seminar last year that if he had to chose between his stitcher and his splitter he would keep the splitter and sew everything by hand. Greg

[greg gomersall]

(Moved here by Johanna from the Cantle thread)

As for Joel's talk at the TCA he said he felt a saddle should bridge a little so a horse can round up under neath it. This is not a desireable trait in a usin rig but I believe that if a person were building an areana only type rig you might reconsider, in reining, cutting etc. a horse is constantly underneath himself and his back rounded up quite frequently, The "slight" brigeing effect at this time might work to your benifet. Greg

Greg, You make an excellent point here concerning bridging.

The slight bridging does add some stability to the arena type saddle when a horse is working with a rounded back as long as it is not an end to end type of bridging.This is especially true when cutting. It is important that there is still flare and relief at the bar ends. If done properly you can still achieve plenty of bearing surface without creating excessive pressure points and this can work well for its intended short term use.Too much bridging can actually encourage a horse to drop his back or refuse to round it when there is too much pressure at the tips (rear) of the bars and of course this leads to other issues.

I totally agree with you on the long term daily using rig.

Respectfully

Blake

Hi Everyone

I apologize for hijacking the thread and taking it away from cantles.

I guess another to to say what I have been trying to say is that on an arena type saddle I would use a flatter bar (one with less rock). Maybe this is a more palateable word than the word bridging. Of course one must make sure the tips and edges of the bars are not digging in. What we ask and expect a horse to do in the arena varies a lot from what we ask a horse to do in the pasture. Greg