Never had any trainer object to using my own saddle to lesson on a lease or school horse in decades of riding and not always owning. But never had a trainer who would not have sent me back to the barn for showing up with the pads like that. The too much padding in front just make the wings fit even tighter into the shoulders but the pad stopping 6” short of the back of the saddle leaving it waving over a bare back then sitting nose high when you sit back and down is something I really have never seen before. Really, since 1970. And I have seen quite alot. Made plenty of my own mistakes too…just fix it and move on much the wiser.
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I should know more about saddle fitting than I do… But honestly, my experiences with pro saddle fitters were not great! They contradicted each other, the things they pointed out all seemed true but were also hard to definitively see or feel, and it all just felt really, really complicated and cryptic—more art than science (but also an art where someone is always trying to sell you a saddle).
I think I felt so burned by the experience, and got upsold so badly on a saddle I didn’t need, it’s like my brain shuts down when the subject of saddle fitting comes up, and I’m not prepared to open that can of worms again.
But I guess, if I were going to try, when I look at the saddle, which is a Beval, I would say it has a relatively shallow gullet compared to other saddles I’ve seen, but the tree is wide. It’s not curved or built up in the back, so it does sort of perch on the withers even with the riser in the back and the half pad. But it doesn’t look like it’s too narrow or impinges the shoulders. Idk if that helps at all. I could try to stage proper saddle fit pictures. But I’ll be honest, I’ve never even put it on without a half pad and blanket to see.
Ahhh again that was my choice, and not what the pads looked like by the end of the ride. I can see it looks awful. I was trying to compensate for the fact that they slip back during the ride.
Given that description, I feel like your personal saddle can’t be much worse than how this saddle fits the horse. It is already sitting down on the withers but clearly has instability (pads moving), and despite being too low on the horse in front, needs a riser pad to attempt to be balanced in the back.
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Was that a ride with your trainer or just on your own time?
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My own time
I think it’s impossible to say whether this saddle fits the horse because of all the thick padding in crazy places. So I’m not joining the others who say this is a horse welfare saddle fit issue. Without proper saddle fit pics one simply cannot tell.
But whether it fits the horse well or not, it obvious doesn’t seem to fit you well. So, I would have a nice honest convo with horse owner of the troubles you’re having with your position and see if they will let you try a different saddle while under trainer supervision. I’ve seen a horse get really messed up in a barn where random people used their own saddles, I mean just awful sores and atrophy, so I don’t blame the owner here for being cautious about this.
Good luck, and I agree with others who have said that your leg doesn’t look that bad, I suspect it feels worse to you than it looks because the saddle is messing you up, and/or the horse is too wide for your body to fit comfortably. Maybe you can beg a little hack on a different horse to see how you feel on a narrower horse?
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Have a read through this fitting guide. She used to have videos posted that were the best fitting videos I have found, but they are scattered through her FB page now.
This saddle has to be uncomfortable for the poor horse, she deserves a properly fitting saddle especially at her age.
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Fitters or brand reps? They’re different, and a lot of people don’t realize that! If you call CWD or Voltaire or Antares to come “fit” your horse, you’re getting a brand rep who is trained to sell you a saddle that has features that align to your horse’s basic geometry. Hopefully. They’ve been trained according to the company’s methods, which may be good or not, as opposed to undertaking independent study about equine conformation, biomechanics, and how to make or find a saddle that matches both. And as you note there’s a lot of art in there. Certainly not all the brand reps I’ve met have been bad fitters and not all the independent fitters I’ve worked with have been great.
The horse’s saddle looks like an old Beval Limited. Great saddles, last forever, nicely balanced, BUT. Narrow in the gullet and flat as a pancake in the tree. Not a great option for a horse with breadth over the spine or any meaningful curvature to the spine. And they’re hard to shim unless the horse is fairly narrow, because you’ve got nowhere to put the shim pad. As you’ve experienced, the narrowness means the pad is just too much stuff going on, and that impinges on the shoulder and shoves the pad back. If the tree is wide enough for this horse, I could see trying to solve the bridging problem with something like a ThinLine that was only built up in the middle, but the current state of affairs doesn’t pass geometry class and goes straight to experiencing physics.
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Just a few thoughts.
I cannot tell if this fits the horse or not, all I can see is too much padding under the gullet and too little beneath the cantle. Need to see the saddle on a naked back with and without a rider from both front and back.
I can see that the “sweet spot” of the seat, where your seat bones will land when you sit, even just the down point of each post, puts your leg ahead of your hips. The stirrup bars (where the leathers attach) are too far forward and you will be fighting that every post cycle and when in full seat. IMO.
Beval/Butet saddles are made for horses that jump and will fit most horses that are built for that job, especially the long, low moving Hunters. They do not fit horses built for other jobs as well. To be fair some who ride Jumpers over higher fences do like a saddle that lets them drop behind to push more but those Jumpers are not usually built like that Hunter. Hope this makes sense.
One other thought, saddle trees can warp or crack. They look fine but are just a little off when you ride them. This is an older, well used school saddle and it is possible it ended up on the bottom of a pile of stuff, dropped from some distance (like from the loft onto concrete), got stepped on, rolled over on, flipped over on or somebody backed a vehicle over it…or was never right from day one. Can tell you have watched people endlessly chase position and fit problems only to eventually learn it was not them or the horse, it was the saddle tree.
Don’t think that saddle is helping you or that any padding will make it right. On this horse anyway. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the best answer-use another saddle or think of something else. You are wasting time and money with somebody else’s saddle on somebody else’s horse.
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I went through this too when I returned to jumping after a long hiatus. I assumed it was fitness/position until a clinician finally told me the saddle fit was all wrong for me and was putting me in a chair seat. Lightbulb moment! I bought a lovely used saddle from a COTHer, sold the other one on CL, and never looked back.
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When I returned to riding in lessons, it was clear to me the saddles were OK for the horses but often too small for me. At the start that was OK because all the position errors really were my fault.
When I got my own horse about 3 years in (care lease then purchase) I got a saddle that fit her and was decent on me, I have a long femur for my height and really like an 18 inch saddle. I only learned I have a long femur a few years ago. I thought I had a big butt, I knew 18 felt right, didn’t know why
I never went down a rabbit hole trying to maximize rider saddle fit and I still work on my position.
Here are my thoughts. At the very beginning, rider saddle fit can be not great, but (1) beginners don’t know and (2) they can still learn a lot. But at a certain point saddle fit becomes really important and can destroy your ride. However, for a lot of pros, they can hop on anything and ride in anything and while they feel the problem in fit, they can keep their position OK. Most of us are in the middle zone, we need tack that fits us OK.
Some riders also have their human conformation flaws (especially pelvis, hip, back) that make it hard to get their leg under, their tow pointed forward, etc. I have a friend who is actually a very good experienced rider who can sit shenanigans but she’s got a physical imbalance that means she can never get leg under plus toes forward plus heels down, and it’s made much worse by the wrong tack. So for the viewer on the ground she can look less skilled than she really is.
Interesting on my mare with her wide barrel my challenge is not falling into chair seat. But a while back I had a year riding a dressage horse who was lovely but did tend to fall on the forehand subtly. And my challenge was tipping forward. Both of these issues were subtle but I see them in photos. So the way your horse carries themself also influences what position issues you will have.
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In my nearly 35ish years of active riding, on a LOT of horses/saddles that were not mine, I only ever found one saddle that I literally couldn’t ride in and it was crazy! It was a Lynn Palm hunt seat saddle that fit the mare I was riding, and it was nicer than any tack I had ridden in up to that point (I was in high school at my first show barn). I could not post in that sucker without banging on the pommel and the leathers somehow pinched me higher up my thigh! I remember being really sad I couldn’t ride in it, but they got me and the horse sorted with something that worked better for us both thankfully.
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I’m reminded of a saddle an instructor wanted me to ride in on my horse. It was his, a beautiful Italian made saddle (can’t remember the make for the life of me, this was almost 40 years ago), but it just didn’t work for me at all! It would have been a crotch bruiser if I’d kept on trying.
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