“Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”
~Maya Angelou

Griffy came with a 16″ Custom saddle (Custom is a saddle brand, I don’t mean it was custom made for him) that I hated. It was small, I was big, and no one was having a good time in it, but it fit him, so I suffered through it. In April of 2023 another horse at our barn also needed a new saddle, so J. called her saddle fitter out. I was excited – one of the things you read so much about online is how important it is to have a properly fitting saddle. Back when I was a kid, the idea that a saddle had to fit the horse was….well, not something I’d ever heard. You just put a saddle on a horse and away you went. But now, with all these new-fangled notions like “poorly fitting saddles cause pain” and “we should care about our horse’s welfare” there is a huge emphasis on saddles that fit correctly.

Saddle fitter showed up with a trailer FULL of saddles. I was SO impressed! She had a special stand to put the saddles on where you could sit on them, and seemed very knowledgeable. Merlin, the other horse, went first, and she measured his back, asked his rider some questions about his height, and weight, and pulled 3 saddles out for them to try. She carefully watched how Merlin rode – one saddle he straight up refused to canter, which I found so interesting – I would not have thought it looked uncomfortable, but Merlin is the authority on how he feels. They eventually chose one and then it was our turn. We ended up with 17″ Tech-1 Mono and I absolutely loved it the moment I sat in it. I had ROOM! Of course it helped that I had lost almost 50 lbs, but still. I was more than happy to never sit in that Custom saddle again.

Fast forward to May of this year – C. sat in my saddle and said it felt off center. I didn’t notice it, but another friend who works on saddles looked at it and confirmed there was SOMEthing amiss. It had just been reflocked in April, so we suspected it was maybe just put back together slightly wrong or maybe uneven. But I don’t know anything about working on saddles so I need a pro to come and fix it. C. mentions she thinks it’s too small for me. I ride him in her super fancy Adam Ellis saddle and she says that 50% of my problems with my seat are caused by this saddle. I’m not thrilled with that, but it still feels comfortable to me and if it can be fixed so it fits him evenly, well, it’s what we got.

Trying to get the saddle fitter back out turned out to be a challenge. She was very non-responsive via text and said it would be at least 6 weeks before she could get out here, or she had a colleague she could recommend. I went with her colleague because the idea of the saddle being off was making me nervous – he’s doing SO well, and I would really like to not add back problems to the list of things we have to treat.

So. Get to the barn to see Griffy has thrown a shoe. Awesome. There goes my plan to groom Talos first, 40 minutes of traipsing around the pasture (but I found it!) Throw on a boot and we’re good to go. Fitter shows up and looks at the saddle and sees immediately that the flocking is uneven – which is annoying, but pretty easy to fix. However, she agrees the saddle is too small for me….and what’s worse, it doesn’t actually fit Griffy. She shows me where the pressure is coming down on his back and where it’s gapped and it’s not good. My heart sank – we’ve had this saddle for a YEAR! It was professionally fitted! I went to a saddle fitting clinic and every single person had a saddle that didn’t fit their horse – I wasn’t able to bring Griffy, but I was watching them with a smug sense of satisfaction that our saddle fit.

Saddle fitter has another model she thinks will work for us, she makes a few adjustments and we give it a try. You know how, in my last entry, I said when Griffy talks, he talks loud? Yeah, he was VERY clear that he liked this saddle a lot more. In fact, C. called out “Get him in a big rolling walk and see if he’ll offer to trot!” and before I even cued him to do anything he started trotting. His walk was free and relaxed. We swapped back to the Tech 1 after she adjusted the flocking so it was straight and there was a huge, noticeable difference. Put new saddle back on again and boom – free, swinging walk. So yeah, I have a new saddle.

I don’t mind the expense – I will pay literally any amount of money for his comfort. But I feel like I’ve tried so hard to do right by him and I’ve failed at every turn just because I don’t know enough to judge something on my own and the professional I’ve trusted has let us down. It was obvious to me that today’s saddle fitter was vastly superior to the other one, but at the time I had no frame of reference and she seemed to know what she was doing.

All I can do is try to keep learning and doing better by him & Talos, but it’s disheartening to get it wrong when it means their comfort suffers.