If you don’t want to ride Saddleseat, you really don’t have to. I never rode Holly Saddleseat.
As others have said, these horses are very versatile. It’s not their fault that the breed registry has for so long only promoted SS to the point that people start thinking that’s all they can do.
There was an ASB named Brave who finished the Tevis Cup “okay to continue” and in a respectable, middle of-the-pack position. That was a mother-daughter pair. You may have heard of the daughter’s mount - a hackney pony named Flash who was the smallest equid ever to finish the Tevis.
ASBs are also showing up more in eventing and doing well there.
Nana Equestrian Training (and others) on FB trains and shows Dressage with ASBs.
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Saddlebred horses have made it up to Prix St. Georges.
Although I’m a member of the breed association, I’m not a fan of some of their actions in the past. They have only recently started actually rewarding the “horses who do it ALL” and joined with the USEF. Now a horse can get a CH-SH designation whereas before, that designation didn’t exist, they only promoted SS with the “Peacock of the Show Ring” line and they still haven’t BANNED the messed-up tails.
Getting the breed registry straightened out is a work in progress and I’m sure I’m not the only person who has answered their questionnaires with some of these types of comments.
How do you want to ride Honey? She will help you figure that out.
Do you know what her breeding is? What information do you have about her usage history?
If she has shown, she will have the same gaps in her training that Holly did. Holly’s seller had taken her through the futurities where she did ok, then in the ridden divisions.
I’ve since learned that the way they handle the ASB show horses is different. I had to teach Holly to stand tied. She didn’t know how. Nobody had ever asked her to. She was a show horse. They took her from her stall, someone held her while she was tacked up, the rider mounted, they went out and did their thing, and came back in. Someone held her while she was untacked and then groomed and put back in her stall.
So nobody had ever expected her to stand tied. At the first barn I had her at, there were some real cowboys who were a real help with this. She also didn’t like being tied in the wash rack. I could, with finesse, get her into the wash rack, but she didn’t like it once in. Eventually, one day, she decided to really push it. I wish I had taken a picture of her playing tug-o-war with the wash rack. People were asking me if I was going to intervene, and I was “No.” If that situation was going to go south, it would be all on her. I wasn’t going to put myself in the middle so she could blame me/connect me to the “south” part. She tried to pull herself apart for about 15 or 20 minutes. She wasn’t panicking. She was trying to pit her physical strength against the bull-snap on the wash rack and her halter. Thanks be that the halter won. (a Parelli rope halter someone had given me).
Now, she will stand tied just fine. I never did succeed with cross-ties.
AND, My gal was skinny when I got her too (the great recession had hit, and her seller had hit hard financial times). Here’s a before and after in the wash rack i was telling you about. In these photos, she’s 5. When I had the vet come out to look at her, his first words were, “Easy to lose weight, hard to bring it back!” We brought her back by just giving her all the Alfalfa pellets she could eat, all the time.
In the second photo there, you see how she’s fidgeting in the rack. She’ll do it, but not happy.
Now, about saddles and skinny horses. I read where you were trying to fill in that gap with shims. If it were me, I’d stay away from shims in this case. Imagine what happens to the horse/saddle combo when you put your foot in the stirrup - The saddle pulls down with your weight. The outside shims push up against the side of her spine because she has no topline. I’d bet that part hurts. Not because she has any intrinsic physical issues, but just because of how the whole thing is working on HER, NOW.
If she were mine, I’d get away from shims and go to lots of cushy padding. Thick wool Toklat pads and a Merino wool half pad. She doesn’t have any cushion of her own, so I’d give her some extra that is nice and soft.
Just my 2¢.
I didn’t think about it either when I was going through all the struggles trying to figure out my young saddlebred. I’d had 35+ years of riding other breeds and he just stumped me, and he stumped the sport horse trainers I tried to put him with.
