Cob Jockey

As I totally didn't cover in my previous post, on canter night I started to suspect that Disco's saddle wasn't fitting well. His body language was tense and angry, and I felt a pressure point behind his shoulders, as well as a real asymmetry. As an in-the-moment fix, I shimmed it with a half-pad which made him feel just better enough to get us through.

Afterward, I grabbed the Wow saddle fitting gauge we have and discovered that he's gone DOWN two headplate sizes, with all other components staying the same. 

This makes some sense: I know he's grown 3.5cm in the last 6 months, that he has visually sprouted withers, and that I can't make jokes about him being shaped like a potato anymore. Still - I didn't expect him to go down, and I was grateful to have the gauge to confirm that for me.

Not happy.

I got the headplate swapped out and also reset my Flair panels to atmospheric air pressure before going through the slow, methodical reinflating process as best I could without a second set of hands to do it while I was in the saddle, which is best practice. 

And...

It was like I had a different horse. One I had never felt before.

WHO IS THIS HORSE.

At least on straight lines where he could more easily balance, he was forward, he was moving over his back, he was reaching for the bit. He was TAKING ME, finally, which we have been working on for so long.

I felt bad that he had been suffering with a poorly fitting saddle for at least a few months, but I felt vindicated that with Wow, fixing it was as easy as re-measuring him and then spending a half hour in the office swapping out parts. I really don't know how I'd do the young horse journey without it! 

Look at those ears! What a change.

I'm not glad it happened, but I'm grateful that it taught me some things about Disco that I needed to know: that his default response to "something isn't right" is to go #slugmode, and that (I had already been gathering data on this one) he is not at all stoic about pain, which I am so grateful for after Connor, who would rather suffer in silence than let me know something is wrong.

There's still more adjustment that needs done the next time I have a second set of hands, particularly for balance, but I already felt so much more secure and balanced in it even though it was dumping me out the back a bit, and it paid off during the ride: I was much more able to influence his body parts than I have been lately.

Shame Pivo cut off his head here, he was going so cute.

That's it - I officially am all-in on Wow. It is so much kinder to the horses to be able to make adjustments like these on the fly rather than waiting for a saddle fitter, or experimenting with different saddles forever. I'm going to be setting a recurring task on my to-do list to re-measure him every month from here on out so that I can stay on top of changes like this while he finishes growing.