If I know who you’re talking about, and I’m pretty sure I do, she posts lots of fancy pictures and drawings of saddles that don’t fit horses and explains in great detail why she thinks they do. Most of her posts make no sense and much of what she is posting is stuff I have heard parroted by other Stubben fitters, so it seems to be the corporate party line.
Their trees are no different than any other traditional saddle tree. It is the same shape as any other belted tree made of wood. There is nothing unique to them, despite the promotional material. They claim to use elasticated webbing to give “suspension” to the seat, but I’m not sure I believe it because unless it stretches only a very minor amount, the seat would wear very quickly and deform. Additionally, this brand was historically known for very hard seats, so that makes little sense.
The video discussing the flexible tree involves placing exactly the opposite kind of force on the saddle tree as she’s describing. Flexing it front to rear like that requires a compressive force. The rider’s weight, by definition, would not produce this movement or this action because neither the front nor the rear of the saddle are fixed in position by a solid mass. Thus, absolutely nothing happens in terms of flex when the rider sits in the saddle. If any point of the tree could flex, it would be the points being spread by the downward force of the rider’s weight versus the fixed mass of the horse’s body - but that is why saddles have steel headplates, so that doesn’t happen. That saddle that she posted a photo of will fit a little better with a rider in it and the girth on, but it is not going to fit properly. I don’t agree that the gap should be filled with a pad or with flocking, I think overall this saddle is not right for this horse and it seems she agrees with me since the video is of her trying to demonstrate that the saddle in question does not flex, but in a very convoluted way to prove that other brand would fit. I think it probably would, but that has nothing to do with the flexibility of the tree. Red herring.
I see several posts on this person’s page indicating why it is acceptable to fit a saddle that is too narrow or completely the wrong shape for the horse or bad for the rider. For example, I see a very detailed post in which the saddle is balanced by stuffing up the rear to align with the horse’s STANDING center of gravity, which makes little sense at all. That very area will lift if the horse is working correctly and the extra flocking in the rear will press into the horse’s back with the rider’s weight.
In general I think saddle fitters should really have to take some biomechanics and kinetics courses to be certified or at least be good at what they do. It is not difficult to understand how the horse’s back works and how the rider influences it if you have a basic understanding of physics and spatial relationships. In pursuit of more comfort for the horse we have turned saddle fitting into an incredibly detailed rocket science that leaves the average horse owner scratching their head and assuming that every minute their saddle doesn’t fit. That may not be true if you can develop your own eye for what will fit and what will not and what problems are likely to cause actual discomfort versus what are nonissues.
