lol no thanks!!!
thank you @IPEsq for the clarification!!
I’ll see if there’s an Antares rep around, I’ve never ridden one but still in the running.
I’m a hunter rider at heart so whatever I get needs to be plain, all leather. Definitely no pink piping!!
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I only ride lesson horses now. I have MS with handicaps (bad balance, etc.) and my rides go much better when I ride in my own saddle, the one with all my safety add-ons.
After a lot of reading and looking I realized that the saddles I had were in no way going to fit most of the horses I lesson on. Since the lesson horses are mostly ridden by girls, not mature women, their saddles often do not fit me well or the saddle’s balance is all wrong for me.
Since I can only handle 30 minutes of riding, and I just ride the horse once a week I just could not see buying multiple saddles just so I could feel secure on the horses and so that the horses would not experience discomfort when I rode them.
I bought myself a Pegasus Butterfly Claudia Jumping saddle.
I had to work hard to learn how to ride in this saddle since my sense of balance is very poor. It took me a while to find the proper pad for stability (Fenwick Western Pad–long to cover the loins, non-slip) and to learn what being in balance felt like in this saddle because there is no rigid front of the tree to give me a (false) sense of stability.
I am still riding in this saddle many years later. My riding teacher has had not problems with me using it on her precious lesson horses since I own shimmable 6-pocket pads for difficult to fit horses. For the first few years of riding in this saddle we had to get the girth tight, and then tighten the girth at least once more during the ride if I trotted.
Soon I might be allowed to ride my riding teacher’s new lesson horse, a 14 year old Egyptian Arabian mare. I am so excited! I remarked to my teacher that at least I would not have to worry about my saddle fitting her, the mare’s back looks quite suitable for a saddle. My riding teacher agreed.
It is so nice to have my own saddle that can fit probably 95% of the lesson horses around. This saddle gives a lot of shoulder freedom to the horse so I get a lot less sucking back. The rider has to learn how to ride in this saddle because it demands excellent balance in the rider. Regular treed saddles give some stability to the saddle so the rider does not realize when they start to get out of balance and the rider might be unbalanced to one side for an entire ride. Since the Pegasus Butterfly saddles do not have a rigid pommel it becomes rapidly obvious when I get out of balance and I have to correct myself to get a decent ride.
I am an adult ammy (74) and this is the saddle I ride in now.
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Have you considered getting something adjustable for if you do settle on leasing or buying something? I just went through saddle fitting h*** with my guy (medium wide back but big shoulders that most saddles crunch and 7 years old so still developing and changing shape) and I learned a lot along the way. I narrowed my options down to Erreplus or Prestige due to the adjustability of the tree and flocking before I met with my independent saddle fitter who ultimately put me in a Peter Horobin. Like the Prestige and Erreplus it has an adjustable tree and wool flocking. I do the jumpers and I’ve really liked the saddle and it has this patented stride free tree that seems to fit a lot of horses well. Mine is just set to medium wide and most horses I’ve ridden in it seem happy and it’s fits them decently well. I got an 18 inch Melbourne II but they have other models if you’d prefer something a bit closer contact or a monoflap. Feel free to PM if you have any questions.
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(flame suit on) I absolutely love my Collegiate Diploma. I’ve had a Diploma for like ten years now. The first one I got (~$500) was sold to me (ebay) as a size 18 but it was actually a 17 or 17.5, so eventually I sold it to my friend who also loves it. Then I bought myself a new one (on sale at horseloverz.com for ~$750) in 18" and I may never buy another jump saddle again. It has a changeable tree plate and is wool flocked. It’s SO hard to find flocked saddles these days, they all seem to be foam.
For dressage, I bought a Zaldi from Spain for $500 incl. shipping, new. I had issues with that seller (some kind of distributor or something), who said they shipped to the USA all the time, but then they didn’t use my address as provided by Paypal and changed around address details to fit what they thought was what based on the EU standard nomenclature (they had the house number as the zip code, the street name as the city, no state). However, after it took 6+ months for the saddle arrive, it did indeed arrive, and it’s fantastic. Also a changeable tree system and wool flocking.
Personally, I’ve never had any issues with “low end” saddles and have never felt the need to spend ridiculous amounts of money on “high end” saddles. Both of my current saddles are good grippy leather that still has enough substance that I don’t have to be super obsessive about not dinging it, or what pants I wear, like you have to do with calfskin. I’m a big believer in the changeable tree/gullet systems, and regularly change my tree plates as my horses shapes change with muscle development and age. Also, one of my (thoroughbred) mares is a medium, the other is a medium wide when out of shape and a wide when in shape, so not having four saddles for them is nicer on my pocketbook. I can just change the tree if I want to use the dressage or jump saddle on the other, or switch, etc. I’ve also used both of them on about a dozen other horses, and they are super easy to plate change and then shim in a saddle pad to get a reasonable fit.
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Not trendy but I’ve been especially happy with my Kent and Masters saddle. It’s adjustable and fits most horses with a shim pad really well.
It’s wool flocked with my horses prefer over foam.
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I was under the impression that it’s unwise to use a wool paneled saddle on multiple horses?
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I think it depends on which fitter you talk with.
My fitter hates the saddles that don’t use wool, but another fitter I was referred to only has non-wool saddles.
Personally, I think it’s horse dependent and no one actually knows.
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I don’t know if it’s “unwise” to use wool but I definitely think foam is the better choice in a situation like OP’s. I prefer wool when I’m fitting a saddle to a specific horse but there’s really no wool equivalent to pro panels. Wool saddles work best when they’re flocked to fit a specific horse, and the flocking will conform and settle a bit over time to that horse’s back, so keeping them in a true neutral is harder. If you have it fit to a horse with a pretty average back you can get fairly close, but you’re also not really getting the benefits of using wool in the first place. Foam is less adjustable but it’s predictable, and you can make up some of the difference with shims.
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Has anyone ever had an Antares Connexion? Reading some good things.
The Diploma is a VERY useful saddle. It fits me very well and I use mine for young horses going through expected changes in shape, as it has an adjustable gullet.
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I briefly had one before I got an Antarès Contact instead. I liked it but the tree was too curvy for my TB’s back. The Contact sat on him much better
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I’ve never heard that before.
I’ve never had a foam saddle long term, but per my discussions with saddle fitters, the benefit of one over the other long term. Once foam flattens out, it’s flat, and it’s apparently significantly more difficult to replace foam flocking than it is to replace wool. When wool flocking flattens out over the years, you can easily replace it.
Short term, wool flocking can be changed to help make your saddle fit a specific horse. But obviously, that’s a benefit for one horse. It wouldn’t be cost-effective to have the flocking messed with weekly or monthly. However, I’ve never heard of it being a problem on multiple horses. It’s still just stuffing. Shimmable pads work just as well with wool saddles.
I was going to chime in to recommend Kent and Masters or Thorowgood. Or Fairfax.
