The time finally came: I bought a saddle. I had a saddle already, but I say " like Nick and I "have" a steak knife. We have a single old knife that sort of gets the job done, isn't very pretty, and isn't even meant to be doing what we're doing with it, but it's all we have. Likewise, my good old Collegiate that I way overpaid on in 2006 wasn't going to cut it on the backs of some of the nicest horses in southern Indiana - aesthetics aside, it fit shark-finned Thoroughbreds pretty well, and wouldn't have fit on roly-poly Cob backs at all.
So I went hunting on Ebay, and found a beautiful 16" Beval CC saddle, approximately 5 or 6 years old. It had been kept indoors and they'd taken wonderful care of it, just outgrown it. And with it being a Beval, it's of such quality that it will just keep going for decades with good care. I was nervous buying a saddle off of the Internet, but I bit it and purchased it for $575. (I found a Craigslist ad for the same saddle, girl had wanted $750 out of it but I was the only bidder.)
It ended up fitting Aviator perfectly, and he's a pretty cobby-Cob. It fit his brothers and sisters just fine with a fluffy pad, too, so I think it will be fairly versatile. But what really made me happy was how well it fit me. It's no secret: I'm tiny. I'm 5'0, and my femurs are short. I've gotten really good at riding in whatever comes my way, thank you college and the IHSA, but most saddle are either too big for me in the seat or too long in the flap/cut, and they end up putting me in a chair seat and making me lose my effective communication with the horse. I got none of that with this saddle. It fits me like it was made for me, and the padding and knee rolls are so minimal, I felt like I was sitting on the horse. In short, it was one of the best purchases I've ever made. And now I am poor.
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