Has anyone tried the butterfly saddle recently? Someone recommended it for my cob type pony but I dont know anyone that rides in them. Opinions?
I have only seen a couple of horses in them, however both had major back pain and issues.
I LOVE my Pegasus Butterfly Claudia jumping saddle. In combination with my Contender II BOT/ThinLine pad and shims I can fit every horse I currently ride, horses with different shaped backs, withers, shoulders etc… My riding teachers also like that I use it on their horses.
I’ve used it on: a 6yr. old OTTB with high withers that go well back and strong shoulders (no shims in the pad); an EXTREMELY high crouped 22 yr. old QH (double bridging shims); a 33 yr. old Arab mare whose back sags badly (also with 2 pairs of bridging shims); a 25? yr. old Arab-Welsh mare who is very thick through the withers, a Arab-Morgan?-Mustang-ASB? gelding who has a wide back, and a pretty narrow TWH mare.
If you get one you HAVE TO get a shimmable pad for the harder to fit horses. I will only use a pad with six pockets for shims (the saddle came with an eight pocket pad, the six pocket pad works much, much better for me.) Before I figured the saddle out I had some problems though, and the trick seems to be to use the shims to make where the saddle rests as flat as possible (thus the 6 pocket pad.)
At first I could not keep the saddle centered (using the 8 pocket pad that came with it.) I finally figured out that with the free moving front part of the tree that the horse’s shoulders were shoving the saddle to one side or another (depending on which side of the horse is stronger) and since I have horrible balance (MS) I would end up listing to one side. That led me to using a pad with 6 pockets. Nowadays I find that the saddle moves a tiny bit to one side when I do turns on the forehand or turns on the hindquarters, so I check afterwards to be sure I am centered.
Now I use the 6 pocket pad, with shims if needed. String girths can help too, but once I got the shims in the pad straightened out I could go back to my Lettia Cool-Max girths.
The wonderful thing about this saddle is that there is no pommel arch to run into with my pubic bone. I can get my seat as forward as necessary (good for the horse with the very high croup), much more forward than I can with my regular jumping saddles (Crosby, Stubben Siegfried.) If I need to move my seat further back I have no problems.
Another wonderful thing about this saddle is that the horses move FREELY under it, the top of their shoulder blades do not run into the tree like they do with a normal saddle, and they can extend their strides with comfort. I do not have to use as much leg because the horses are comfortable. This was what kept me going with this saddle before I figured out the proper shimming and I had problems, the horses were moving with much more fluidity even when I was off center, of course when I finally figured out the shimming the horses moved even better.
I no longer own any horses. I really, really, really like having a saddle that I can get to fit the wide variety of school horses I ride. This saddle also has the most comfortable seat I’ve ridden in for jumping saddles.
I no longer want to ride in a regular treed saddle. This is the best saddle I have ever owned. It just took some figuring out.
We check the horses’ backs after every ride and have not noticed any soreness even when I was ending up off to one side. I tend to scrub the horses’ backs with the HandsOn grooming gloves after unsaddling, and I have never noticed any flinching anywhere.
Most of the time, with a every other type of saddle, you can tighten the girth once when you get on (maybe more if you horse is a real blowfish, but that’s not always a reaction to the saddle) and you are good to go.
In my experience with the Butterfly saddles, you have to tighten the girth in increments in the first few minutes of the ride like a ratchet while the tree locks in place. Riders who don’t do this end up with sore horses because the tree can shift while they ride. And the riders who do do this end up with royally irritated horses. A lot of modern girths with elastic will secure the saddle before they are tightened to the max. I remember my trainer lecturing everyone about not overdoing the girth when the Pro Choice Ventech girths became popular. If you over tighten an elastic girth, the horse will usually get sore. But, with a Butterfly saddle either the girth will need to be so tight that it squeezes the crap out of the horse, or it the tree will not fix itself and rock and make the horse sore. So it’s a no-win situation IME.
I had the same problem with having to repeatedly tighten the girth at first.
Once I got the shims shorted out we usually have to tighten the girth just once when I start my ride, just like I do when I ride in other regularly treed saddles. We no longer have to tighten the girth so much that it irritates the horse.
When I first got the saddle I had to ride in it several times (for 30 minutes a ride) before the hinges got properly mobile. Those were some ah interesting rides for sure, but amazingly all the horses I ride never took advantage of me when I had problems with the saddle. Since I have MS and HORRIBLE side-to-side balance the horses would have been able to get me off their backs without any problem at all.
Oh, I forgot earlier, I had started riding in this saddle with regular riding tights. Once I got myself a pair of silicon full seat breeches a lot of my problems disappeared since the force of the horses’ strides no longer shifted my seat across the seat of the saddle.
A six pocket pad with shims, a string girth and the silicon full seat breeches helped solve my initial problems with this saddle. I DID have problems at first, but now I love, love, love riding in the saddle because the horses move so freely, much more than with other saddles. Of course this free movement from the horse is part of the reason why I had problems at first as I had to learn to adapt my riding to their freer movement.
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