Half pad for sensitive back - dressage

[HorseBuff]

@sheltona01

The trees (for the most part) actually do get longer as the seat size goes up. Sometimes you can move the cantle plate around to get a bigger size, but for the most part, the trees are actually just longer.

The gullet is the channel between the leather panels. Yes it can be narrower or wider depending on the saddle. Different companies do measure tree sizes differently and the different type of head shapes drastically affect how the same tree size fits very differently on the horse. The SMS defines tree sizes by the angle of the tree points. So if they follow the SMS guidelines, they actually are similar in the tree sizes. However again, the head shape really affects how the saddle fits. A Wide hoop tree is going to fit drastically different from a wide angular tree even if the angles are the same.

If you really want to know more about saddle fitting, look up Kay Hasilow on facebook. She has a lot of good blogs and videos about saddle fitting. She teaches the SMS class and now is semi retired after about 40 years of saddle fitting. I do not particularly like the Schleese stuff. They actually have a lot of misinformation about saddle fitting. It all sounds really good on the surface, but once you start actually researching the topics, they always take a funny turn in the middle and is not right. However if you do not study saddle fitting or anatomy in depth, you would never know that it is not quiet right.

Hope that helps!

Thank you! I’ll check out Kay Hasilow.