Padding up in the back?

[cruisecontrol]

I have a friend who rides her TWH in a western saddle he’s a pleasure horse and she wanted something she could be most comfortable in. Per her most recent chiro visit he told her the saddle no longer fit him in the back. ( I was not at the appt so don’t know a whole lot of what was said) So she looked online for some sort of bumper pad until she can get a saddle fitter out and get him into something else. My question is do you recommend something for padding up on western saddles? I come from hunter land and we have the bumpers and wither pads but I’ve never really heard of a bump for the back of a western pad. Hopefully this makes sense and if their is another thread could someone link it to me?

TIA!

[aktill]

Shim pads: http://www.aboutthehorse.com/secure-web/html/videopadorderform.shtml

[beau159]

@cruisecontrol;8763087

My question is do you recommend something for padding up on western saddles?

Depends.

If the saddle is only slightly off, you can pad where needed. There are shims out there as well as pads that have removable pockets so you can customize where you want extra padding.

But if the saddle does not fit at all, no amount of padding will help.

[Bluey]

We used to buy that foam rubber at Walmart sold to put under sheets to help with old hard mattresses and cut shims of that to add under the saddle, above the saddle blanket.
We would shape the shims any one way we needed with an electric kitchen knife.

Worked fine for us.

[Aspen1]

You don’t want to add more padding where something is already too tight or has high pressure. If you just add more padding where there is already high pressure, you are just making the situation worse. The idea with shims is to fill in gaps so there is equal contact and pressure everywhere. With that as a goal, evaluate the saddle. If you can’t do that, then adding more padding won’t help.