Saddle Shopping, Again...

I’m back in saddle fit purgatory. I adore my current saddle and the tree actually fits pretty decently, however, as I’ve mentioned previously it has started to really slide forward during rides. In addition now that she’s getting more fit it seems slightly wide.

I think that part of the saddle sliding forward could be fixed by a saddle fitter but there are several things that a fitter would need to do and honestly I just don’t trust the fitter that came out last time since she went back and forth so much. I’m hesitant to have her do a bunch of stuff which would likely reduce the value of my (already not very valuable saddle) and then possibly still not have it fit. One of those things is that the billets are just way too far back for my pony’s very forward girth groove.

Saddle where it's supposed to be, billets pretty far off

I think I need a point billet so that’s been one of the items on my new saddle checklist. The others are short panels, close contact feel, short flaps, and preferably the option to get it in brown. Oh, and of course that it fits and is in my budget.

On paper the Prestige Lucky seems to be all of these things. It comes in a 16” seat but people have said that it feels like a 17” since it’s a much more open seat. It has nice short flaps, point billets, short panels, has a more close contact style, is within my budget, and it even comes in brown!!

It has been extremely tricky to actually find one that I can take on trial though. I found a US tack shop that carried the saddle and although they didn’t have a trial listed the description of the saddle mentioned a trial so I gave them a call. They were extremely helpful and told me that they normally get their trials direct from US Prestige but in this case Prestige had just sold the trial saddle to a customer and so it wasn’t available. They let me know it would be about a month for US Prestige to get the saddle back in and then get it sent to them.

It ended up taking about a month and a half and, unfortunately, when they called me the timeline for me getting the saddle would have meant that it would arrive at my barn at the beginning of my trip to WA and while L was in Sweden. I wasn’t able to push it off at all since they had another customer in line so I let them know that they could send it to her and then once they got it back I would take it.

I hadn’t heard anything so on Saturday I called to check in and see when they were planning to get the saddle back and found out that the other women wasn’t able to take it either so they’d sent it back to Prestige. They may have tried to call me when I was in WA but I didn’t get the call. It sounded like they may need to get back in line and I resigned myself to another month or more wait. Then, on Tuesday I got a call from someone at the tack shop and she let me know that it was still available!! They are getting it from US Prestige this week and then it will get shipped to my barn, hopefully next week. I’ll have all of my fingers and toes crossed that it fits and that I’m able end my saddle search for the time being.

Trainer Ride: Lesson Recap 5/15

I really enjoy having an instructor that can ride my horse occasionally since I feel like it's such a great way for her to really feel what's going on in a way that she may not always be able to see from the ground (although L is damn good at seeing what's going on from the ground). It was actually part of why I decided to take lessons with L since not only was she willing and able to ride but she was small enough to ride my smallish dressage pony in a way that another instructor might not have been.

With that in mind, I really don't want to go more than a few months without having her hop on and make sure that I'm not setting Katai up with any habits. I have a pretty good feel for when something isn't going the way that it should but I'm not nearly the rider that L is. So, at my last lesson I brought up that I wanted L to ride Katai again soon. I mentioned that we could wait until after the show but L said that she wanted to ride at the lesson today instead. Then I'll have two more (since I'm getting a lesson at the show grounds) lessons before the show.

Love the extra fluffy mane in this one

In the meantime L had three lessons scheduled to ride with Susanne Winslade but found out that two of her client horses that she'd planned on riding were lame. When she mentioned it to Susanne apparently Susanne made a comment along the lines of, "Too bad you can't ride that spectacular little pony that your student rode on Monday." L messaged me on Tuesday but unfortunately it just wasn't in the budget for me to pay for any additional lessons. At any rate I was thrilled to hear that Susanne really liked Katai and that L would have wanted to ride her in a lesson. The only comment that Susanne made was that Katai was really locked up on the left side which both L and I are aware of.

L started off working on just kind of figuring out where Katai was at since it's been quite some time since she rode last. Then she started working on getting her to release to the left. At first there was some not so pretty stuff but then she really did it and L really got her back up in that direction which is tough impossible for me to do.

After that she was working on doing some sitting trot, transitions within the trot, shoulder in, haunches in, and canter in each direction. There were some great moments, good moments, and not so good moments but Katai tried everything that L challenged her with. She had a few minor moments but absolutely no melt downs. I asked L how she felt and was extremely flattered when L said that I'd been doing a good job with her and that Katai felt great :-) L also mentioned that everything she was schooling was from 1st level! She said that some of it wasn't very good yet but still, it made me so happy to hear that she's getting to the point where we can at least school it!

A moment of sass

However, we were both annoyed to see that my saddle is really sliding forward again. Katai has lost some weight (in a totally good way as you can see from the photos) but it means that her saddle is sliding again and not necessarily a great fit anyway. We talked about getting the Prestige Lucky trial again (I'll be calling on Monday) and I'm really hoping that it will be the answer. L had to get off twice to adjust my saddle today which is demoralizing at best. I'll be riding her with the half pad again until I can get a saddle that fits.

Update - With Pictures as promised!

Things have been great!

No things have been better than great things have been awesome!!!

I finally have a saddle. As of tonight it is trainer approved and ready to be added to the credit card tomorrow. I'm stoked! Well not about the credit card thing but about finally having something to ride in. It's been over a month since I've been able to be able to plan to go to the barn and ride because I've needed to borrow J's County which she 1. is understandably reluctant to let students use and 2. uses on some of the lesson horses when she has to. 

Here is the glorious thing.

It's a Passier Vector which I'd never heard of before and seems to be fairly rare. It has a medium tree, 17" seat, upswept panels that keep it short enough for Katai's back. It also, oddly enough, has foam panels which I'm happy about in this case since this is the only saddle that has fit and foam is soft and supposed to hold up better than wool. Of course it can't be adjusted but this is a bargain basement saddle so if/when Katai outgrows it I'm not too worried about passing it along and buying something else.

Soooooo happy!

I also had my lesson tonight and Katai, who's been behaving absolutly beautifully, had an off night. However, it was a great reminder of just how far we've come as well as just how good she is. We had a couple minor dissagreements but she never did anything dangerous and worked fairly well over all. It was dissapointing to have J see her the worst she's been in awhile but she seemed to believe me that she'd been better and she has finally approved me starting to trot her so she must have been happy overall.

I did manage to find someone to take some pictures while J was lunging and they aren't great but at least you can see Katai. I know I'm lacking in the picture department so here you go!

I love this picture! I just wish it weren't as blurry.

and an even blurrier picture but you can kind of see how nice she is moving in this one. I love the pink blur of her boots :)

Now to just get her to carry herself like that when I'm riding her!