Cob Jockey

It absolutely kills me to write these words, but I also definitely knew it was coming.

My saddle doesn't fit.

March 2020

I mean, nobody is surprised. The CWD was always "good enough" in terms of fit, but not perfect, and Homeskillet porked out like a cow on a feedlot while in training. Plus, as JenJ always says, no saddle is forever. Toward the end of training, CGP said she thought he was resisting lifting and sitting because of the saddle, which is exactly, verbatim, what and when the fitter that reflocked the CWD last spring said would happen with this saddle.

January 2021. It's subtle, but if you look at the angle of the knee roll, you can see the top of the knee roll is now tilted slightly back toward his tail, and if you look at the back panel, you can tell it's lifted up a bit. Both signs that it's now too narrow.

(Can I just get an "Praise Jesus!" that I didn't spend let's-not-talk-about-it money on the Patrick one year ago and instead bought the $2,000 CWD instead? The price difference between the CWD and the Patrick is more than what I ended up paying for 3.5 months of full training, so that money ended up where it needed to be spent for sure.)

Last week I reached out to Connor's former owner and blogland's favorite saddle fitter/body worker Tara to start the process of saddle fitting with her, because 1. I really trust her, and 2. Any of Frank Baines monoflap Dressage saddles can be made with a Velcro block, which other manufacturers have flat out told me "No" on. 

Come on, this is just genius. I'm going to order mine with as many blocks as they'll sell me so CGP can adjust my leg to her heart's content.

I didn't intend for Tara to take a look at the CWD, I know it needs to go, but in the process of taking conformation photos she thought she saw it sitting a little lower on the right and asked me to place one thin shim underneath it.

Before I rode with the shim, I wouldn't have thought anything was crooked, but damn did that make a difference. And if I thought that was noticeable, I rode him bareback on Sunday and was flat out amazed at what I felt.

After shimming, sitting suspiciously straight

Bareback, he was effortlessly consistent in the contact, he didn't throw his head up for transitions or reinbacks, and lifted his back almost from the beginning of the ride. I could also clearly feel for the first time that his back does have less muscle on the right. 

So now I'm stuck with a horse I desperately want to keep in solid work so I don't lose the muscle he built with CGP, but I'm also facing a long drawn out saddle buying process and a saddle that may be actively hurting him. Which sucks, but all I can do is get that ball rolling.

Poor beefy pony

As an aside, I had a fleeting thought that I'd give the Eq Saddle Science flapless saddle a second try, because that feeling of closeness and how easy it made to ride Connor literally haunts my dreams. But...the more I thought about it, the more I'm convinced that it was the length of the panels that caused the issue last time, given the point at which the pain was most acute was right at the back corner of the panel (as diagnosed by my vet before she'd even seen the saddle). And while it might fit better now that his back isn't as banana shaped, I cannot take the risk that he'll get back pain again and set us back at this point in his training. And ESS told me last year that they won't make a shorter pony panel for me. So...that's sad, but I'm moving on. Hopefully either my next horse fits my anatomy better, or my next horse has a slightly longer back!