Wow, that was a real page-turner of a post!
Sounds like he’s in really good hands.
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My longtime pro has ridden everything in an Hermes saddle from the regular working division to GP.
This used to be the norm for all the pros. Then circa 1995, those poofy Bruno Del Grange balloon kneerolls came out, and all of the sudden, the pendulum started to swing. These bulkier French saddles that followed are a much harder saddle to fit IMO than the old school true close contact saddles. Hermes has bucked the trend
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I think there has been a lot of advancements in saddle technology that makes the old school Hermes and Crosby’s a no go, even if you look past the horses from yesterday being different in the H/J ring than the horses of today. For one, the incredibly narrow channel that doesn’t have great spine clearance. A lot of them also have the narrow, centered billets that pull down in the middle of the tree rather than distributing the pressure from back to front. Carbon fiber, flexible trees have also been a positive advancement.
I think we’ll find a happy medium soon, where wide channels, better billet systems, and flexible trees come with saddles that have less bulk to them.
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This already exists in a lot of the flatter-seat french saddles. Butet, Voltaire Palm Beach, Antares Contact, the newer Arion and Meyer brands, etc. Even Prestige is now making a slimmed-down french-style saddle (Renaissance).
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Oy, your comment has triggered me because I’m hearing echos of the stuff my old CWD rep said to sell me on their “advanced technology”. Apologies if this comes of snarky but I truly just want to share my thoughts on this.
IMO don’t want to have to strap a saddle down over the withers and the lumbar spine if you don’t have to because it’s really not comfortable for your horse and will impede their movement. A saddle with centered/traditional girth straps will not rock, and will make even contact from front to back, IF the saddle actually fits the horse.
The tree should be designed and fitted to provide stability. The reason more saddles are being designed with billets that strap down the front and back of the saddle is that those saddles would be horribly unbalanced and unstable without them. The reason they are unbalanced are the short flexible tree points, and/or seats that put the rider further back (CWD puts almost everyone in a chair seat IMO). The reason certain saddle companies are only making saddles with short tree points in one width is to cut costs. It is expensive to design saddles that fit without having to strap them down in ways that are not comfortable for your horse.
Also, riders with weak positions like the security of sitting in the back seat with a thigh and calf block to hold them in place when things get hairy, so it sells, but you have to use crazy girthing to keep the saddle stable. Believe me—I loved how secure I felt jumping in my trainer’s Mademoiselle. I was sold. It was a costly mistake.
The only thing holding a saddle in place in the case of tree points that don’t clear the traps and put weight on the lats where it belongs, is the girth and a breastplate. Not the actual tree. Might as well strap a beach chair up there. Nice and tight so your horse can’t breathe or move properly works best /s/.
I really believe CWD has gotten away with selling their “advanced girthing system” as a good thing, while cutting significant corners at the expense of horse welfare. Cue the anatomical girths to compensate for the horrible fit and really keep the whole mess stable.
Again, I don’t blame people for buying the sales pitch. It’s hard to find independent fitters and for some, even harder to tell their trainers they won’t be buying a saddle from their sponsor. Happened to me!
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I agree that some of the designs are to facilitate riders being weaker in the tack. I have told students for years that are trying to go Western–> English, that transition will be harder than English–>Western, because the Western saddle is trying to do some of the work for you, and diminishes your need to work on your strength alongside your balance. These bulkier AP-style “close contact” saddles are creating the same phenomenon. I don’t fault anyone for wanting to feel more secure in the tack, but building up the saddles and the blocks may actually be cutting against developing the strength needed to actually be more secure in the tack. And then people have to get very, very sensitive about fit, because they lack the strength to make a mere “average” fit work for them. We are a lesson barn so we have to maximize the adaptability of saddles to horses, and saddles to riders. Less is more for us.
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I could totally see that—ideally, if I were running a lesson program everyone would be in flatter saddles without big blocks or knee rolls, and I’d have a few of the same saddle in different tree widths to fit my schoolies well enough with some shimmable fleece half pads. Tough to find decent saddles like that used that aren’t ancient/questionable though!
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This new billet design is something that many reputable saddle fitters have been saying is a good move across the board, not just the marketing team of one brand. As others have posted, there are many saddle brands who have moved to this style of billet system.
As I understand it, the reason for a wider billet system is to better distribute the downward pressure across the whole of the saddle and not just on a smaller section in the middle. While this does produce more stability, that’s the secondary benefit.
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In theory it sounds good; however, when you think about the anatomy we are looking at, i think it’s okay for the girth to be centered because that’s the strongest and least mobile part of your horse’s back.
Talked to 4 different independent fitters when trying to choose the right saddle for my horse who had become unrideable due to back pain. Each fitter had slightly different ideas about girthing, but my big takeaways were:
For starters, the tree should be designed to keep weight off of the spine, trapezius, and ligaments that shouldn’t have weight on them, and distribute weight to the Longissmus and Lats which are really big thick muscles that can handle the weight. My CWD did NOT do this. The tree points ended right on the traps. Bad for many reasons. My CWD also rocked if it wasn’t girthed up really tight. I was told it was okay by their rep. It’s NOT. If the tree and panels fit, the saddle should be stable without a girth. All the fitters I spoke with agreed on this. So I sold my CWD and cried some more over my vet bills.
Anyway, once you’ve got a saddle that fits appropriately, then you think about how to strap it on in a way that is comfortable.
Billets that put more pressure on the lumbar spine seem sketchy because that is a really mobile part of the back that needs to be able to move for the horse to engage their hind end (at least that’s how it was explained to me when I was watching a horse’s back move while walking on a water treadmill). Putting more pressure at the front of the saddle with a point billet seems problematic too, since it risks putting pressure on the traps (if saddle tree doesn’t clear them), OR seems to put the girth really far forward, potentially restricting the serratus muscles.
Which all begs the question, why would you need to do any of that if your saddle is balanced appropriately? Of course if your horse has ZERO shape it’s gonna be tough to keep a saddle in place without some creative rigging, but most people have horses with withers.
I started thinking about all of this really deeply after I had a saddle fitted to my horse by a highly regarded independent fitter (Society of Master Saddlers). It had flexible billeting—it seemed to fit really well and I could switch from a point billet to a centered billet and the difference was really remarkable in her ability to lift her withers—but she got sore in her lumbar spine again after a couple of months in it. That got me thinking about the whole balance of the saddle (lowest point of seat was not centered, was further back) and I made a switch to a saddle with a centered balance point (right over the girth, with traditional billets) and she couldn’t be happier with it. My position got loads better too. No more fighting gravity in the backseat. Horse’s gaits are way more uphill and horse is less girthy and grumpy. Zero back pain.
Anyway, Just food for thought. The girthing shouldn’t need to compensate for poor design or fit. By way of analogy, it’s like trying to stabilize a poorly packed backpack with extra straps, if you have ever done that kind of thing. Creates loads of pressure points and injuries—better to pack the weight properly first.
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Well it sounds like you’ve had an expensive education in saddle fit problems for your horse and the stupidity or greed of some reps.
The fact that the saddle rocked would have been a total no for me, because it’s a sign the back and tree are mismatched, tree too curvy usually. Also if a saddle put me into a chair seat I think I’d catch that.
However as an adult returning rider I’ve always shopped high end used with the help of my coach/mentor and then an independent saddle fitter she recommended. So I have taken the saddle fitter’s tracings round to consignment stores and taken home trials to see what fit and had saddle fitter confirm and tweak the flocking. I had to self educate a bit in order to manage this. One of the benefits of being on a budget! I do see folks get sold very expensive saddles that don’t really fit but MYOB. I also see folks pick up super cheap saddles that don’t fit.
The more you know the more you can avoid getting conned.
That said, I find it hard to believe that CWD, or Schleese, or any over sold brand with crap reps, is a bad saddle for every horse. I am sure they are good saddles for the percentage of horses that they naturally fit well. And terrible for the ones where the tree is inherently a bad match with that horses back.
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Yes scribbler, you’ve done everything right from the get go. Some of us less perfect humans have had to learn from experience and aren’t afraid to share those experiences with others…
The billeting question is just interesting to me and raises a lot of questions about design and rider position. If people weren’t designing saddles that are unbalanced then you wouldn’t need to redistribute any weight with the girth. Keeping weight over the strongest and least mobile part of the back just makes sense to me, but I have spoken with two independent fitters who have different opinions on it.
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Saddles are balanced when the tree is a good fit for the back, and unbalanced when the tree is not a good fit. Tree shape varies not only in wither gullet, but in rocker curve back to front and drape up and down through the back.
The problem with the big brands with aggressive reps is that typically they only have one shape of tree and the only variation is wither gullet. But the reps over promise and sell saddles that will never fit that particular horse.
I don’t know that I did everything perfectly as a returning rider. Before I got back tracings I did bring home a couple of trial saddles that rocked and took them back to the consignment shop. But when you are on a budget the tradeoff is you need to get more DIY and proactive, about everything. I do self board, I figured out basic nutrition, I rasp between trims as necessary, I treat hoof abscesses without vet help, etc.
Anyhow statistically there have to be horses on which a CWD is balanced. Not your horse, and not mine either (the French saddle consignment mobile shop looked at my tracings and said don’t even try). But some horses
It’s not fair to say a reasonable quality brand is inherently unbalanced. It’s unbalanced on the horses it doesn’t fit and never will. The reps are at fault for aggressive selling when it’s clear it doesn’t fit.
Every single saddle out there is going to be unbalanced on some horses and balanced on others. Just because the consignment Stubben Roxanne and the new Pessoa both rocked on my horse doesn’t mean that they are inherently unbalanced saddles, just that they were not a good fit for her back.
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There’s the balance of the tree on the horse’s back and then there’s the balance point of the rider. You will see that the balance point on CWD saddles is not centered if you look closely. Cue the stability girths etc.
And as far as CWD tree shape— it will look like it “fits” anything because the tree points are so short you might as well not call them points. They don’t do what they’re supposed to do—mainly keep weight off the traps and withers, and redirect to the lats. Totally normalized, but wrong, and causes many problems. It rocks on every horse I’ve seen it on because the tree points are flexible and just squish forward onto the withers. Awful design.
I think I should have listened when a COTH poster gave them the moniker “crunching withers device”. Not all saddles are well designed.
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Have to agree with Scribbler here.
Most of the popular saddle brands got popular because they FIT THE MOST HORSES while simultaneously providing a reasonably comfortable ride for the rider.
My CWDs fit most of my horses ok. As I said above thread, I hate CWD for a whole host of other reasons, but I can also acknowledge that my CWD fit my super-tricky-to-fit OTTB better than the myriad of custom Counties I’d had fitted to him and a number of other brands I tried over the years. That CWD was the first saddle I ever owned that didn’t touch his very stereotypical withers. He loved it as much as I did. I wish I could have gone back in time and swapped out that saddle the day he stepped into his first grand prix rather than struggling through multiple other saddles that fit him, but not me.
I do not buy for a minute that CWD is inherently and horrifically flawed from a design perspective. Many of the top horsemen in the world are riding in them and most of them are not just not knowledgable enough to notice. And yes, I acknowledge that the free-saddles-for-trainers program means a lot of unknowledgable people will put up with anything (and is at the root, why I hate CWD), but when the saddles fit, they’re nice saddles.
But as Scribbler points out, a saddle will always be balanced on a horse it fits and unbalanced on a horse it doesn’t. That doesn’t change brand to brand, and it’s a pretty straight line constant across all types of saddles. Perhaps some brands do a better job at fitting a wider range, but at the end of the day, the tree has to be the right shape for the horse or else you’re compensating in a million different ways.
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My understanding is that CWD saddles are built around one tree design and then customized with panels. If the tree is the right shape for your horse, you’re in luck. If not, I don’t think it’s possible to keep your horse comfortable just by changing the panels.
I do think that some saddles have balance points that are further back than is optimal. I’ve not looked at CWD or the other French saddles as I don’t have one, but it’s obvious in some dressage saddles. Saddles that put the balance point back toward the cantle and then hold the rider in place with blocks, look like a recipe for a sore back to me.
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The reason the CWDs look like they “fit” a wide range of horses is that you don’t have to worry about fitting the angle of the tree to the angle of the shoulder… because the tree points are so short that they sit basically above the scapula, directly on the trapezius on most horses. Weight shouldn’t go there—might be fine to start but over time it will cause major damage. No amount of foam will fix the underlying problem. You might get wither clearance by adjusting the paneling or using shims but all of the weight is still being placed on the wrong spot.
If the tree points on CWDs were longer, they would have to manufacture different widths, or make a tree that can be adjusted, and that eats profits. I remember my CWD rep showing me how flexible the panels and flaps were because the tree points were so short, like it was a good thing for “shoulder freedom”. I so wish I had known better than to believe that line of BS.
Again my belief is that the “distributed girthing system” is just there to compensate for the innate instability of a saddle that has super short tree points and a balance point closer to the cantle than other brands.
Doesn’t mean anything to me that top riders buy the brand. They can sell their horses to amateurs when they don’t perform, after the damage is done.
Yeah, shots fired. I guess this is my hill. I’m gonna die on it shrug. If this makes one person think a little more critically when talking to a rep, mission accomplished.
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My old jumper, and several friends’ AO horses (btw, opinionated animals that will not tolerate being uncomfortable) would have to disagree with you that CWD = BS. Not to mention flexible trees can be quite good, look at all the endurance horses going happily in treeless and RP saddles! Can’t get more short and flexible than that.
It’s obvious you’ve had a bad experience, but I think your ire is misplaced, and it’s frankly off putting. Like, I’d throw your review out if I was researching options because the outrage and seething hatred is overwhelming the (potentially good, but so far barely substantiated) info you’re posting.
I’m with Scribbler as well here. CWD has some terrible reps and business practices, but the saddles fit a certain type of horse and rider quite well. I don’t currently own one of their saddles, but the horse gets the final say. I’m not about to argue if they go happier and better in a certain saddle just because I don’t agree with the design on paper. I think that’s Saddle Fitting 101.
Horses don’t read the fitting manuals, or their papers, or their xrays. Get your tack right, your horse happy in it, and then forget about it.
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I don’t get the hate directed at the girthing system. Have you never seen the girthing system on a dressage saddle?
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What hate? Just describing it and why I think it exists. And yes! But I don’t have a dressage saddle with a crazy girthing system. Mine has traditional centered billets and a seat centered over those. No blocks either.
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