Saddling the PEAR: Best Practices?

[mvp]

I have a new engineering challenge in my young dressage mare. I hope you guys can help.

She is pear shaped and saddles slide forward on her. This is an unprecedented problem in my saddling life, though I have heard others’ tales.

Her specs:

1/2 Arab, 1/2 WB. Young.

I know she’ll change and this problem will get easier as she gets more muscle on either side of her withers, but I think the problem will always be there to an extent.

Has withers (thank God).

Narrow in her rib cage behind her elbows (and she’s not large in the first place, maybe 15.2").

But sausage-round/wide from about the stirrup bars back.

All this means that she needs something like a wide gullet and tree farther back… yet relatively narrow points up front.

Do you recommend point billets for the pear-shaped horse?

Will a foregirth do the job without hurting her?

I have requirements for myself as well which complicate things-- I want to ride in something like a Stubben Tristan or maybe a Tad Coffin. The saddle needs to have a spring tree to keep my body happy. I don’t think I can do injection-molded plastic.

I already saddle this mare by trying to stick the saddle to her with a rubber pad and string girth. The latter does a nice, nice job, FYI.

Thank you for your experience and ideas!

[UrbanHennery]

I wouldn’t say that my QH is pear shaped, exactly, but saddles want to move forward on him. Full shoulder gussets and the right girth solved the issue.

[mvp]

[QUOTE=UrbanHennery;8479414]
I wouldn’t say that my QH is pear shaped, exactly, but saddles want to move forward on him. Full shoulder gussets and the right girth solved the issue.[/QUOTE]

Yeah. I forgot about shoulder gussets. Those seem tough to get Just Right for the horse.

[Scribbler]

An anatomical girth that sits forward at the elbows, further back at the billets.

http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?480878-Spinoff-anatomic-girths-comparison

Helps with my very big-barrelled mare.

[joiedevie99]

Full length shoulder gussets, a point billet, and a shaped girth.

[UrbanHennery]

[QUOTE=mvp;8479437]
Yeah. I forgot about shoulder gussets. Those seem tough to get Just Right for the horse.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I have a Fairfax monoflap (not the latest version) and my saddle fitter made a few adjustments to them when I got it in May. He’s put on quite a bit of muscle since then and I think that they could probably be made smaller, but haven’t had time to get someone back out.

[madams747]

I have a coke-bottle shaped Arab mare and went through… gosh, at least 10 or 11 dressage saddles (including everything Schleese made with the fitter on hand) and could not find anything that would stay off her withers enough to allow her to canter. I gave up for a while and rode in a Western saddle that had a short Arab tree.

Decided to try the saddle search again last July and bought a used Lovatt & Ricketts Ellipse, and amazingly it works. Use it with a mohair string girth and regular saddle pads. No ride up, no problems (no bucking!! yay!!). I will admit that it doesn’t fit me as well as the Schleese did, but I’m still a believer at this point.

We do a lot of lateral work with it, can canter 10m circles smoothly, and I’m in love with finally being able to make some progress. I’m not familiar with the brands that you want but just throwing this idea in for you and your “pear” :winkgrin:

[madams747]

forgot to mention… the anatomical girths did not work on my girl because with the pear shape came a small space between front legs. So the girth hits with every step. Hopefully this is not OP’s problem since I think that type of girth would be useful on the pear problem!

[mvp]

[QUOTE=madams747;8479631]
forgot to mention… the anatomical girths did not work on my girl because with the pear shape came a small space between front legs. So the girth hits with every step. Hopefully this is not OP’s problem since I think that type of girth would be useful on the pear problem![/QUOTE]

Haha, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of an anatomical girth being too broad for her narrow chest. (My, that makes this horse sound attractive…)

In any case, I have been so impressed by string girths, I can’t tell you. They stick to her fur, they are famous for not causing girth galls, they will wrinkle rather than smash into elbows. They are cheap. They wash well.

And a white one will make you look like a mustachioed member of the french military in 1910.

[kpony]

The Delfina girth (20") seems well proportioned for my pear-shaped almost-pony. I just started using it so we will see.

I’ve had 2 saddle fitters tell me to ditch the point billets for this type of horse (and so I have), but wonder if a saddle designed to fit with a point billet (Passier etc.) would actually make sense.

[digihorse]

Do a Stubben and a long string girth. The anatomicals will not work. Have a Stubben Genesis CL which has short points and half panels. Works wonderfully. The anatomical girths actually pull the saddle forward on horse’s like ours.
Point billets, wither gussets, etc. make pony VERY unhappy.

[MelanieC]

My Arab is this shape. He does NOT take narrow points up front because while he is slender in the waist (girth groove) he has big shoulders. I had a Stubben Tristan for a while and it fit him (and me) quite nicely until his shoulders muscled up and outgrew it (it was too V-shaped in front for him). If your mare has a curvy back you might try a Tristan - mine was a 1990s model, blue dot, I think it cost me $500.

We are now in a Custom Icon Flight that cost orders of magnitude more, but I LOVE it and it fits my gelding better than anything else we tried (and we tried a lot).

I too love my mohair girth - custom-ordered a short shaped endurance girth in all black mohair with extra keepers for my long billets from Montana Cincha. Anatomical girths seem to gap on my gelding, but to be fair I haven’t tried that many. If I had a retailer nearby that carried the synthetic version of the Fairfax that comes in narrow gauge models I would try that one. That said, the combo of the Icon Flight plus a mohair girth solved the problem of my saddle moving forward.

[jaybird660]

Without seeing the horse, I would typically try full front gussets. Sometimes, a hoop tree with full front gussets work well on a pear shaped Arab or at least a saddle that is not angular behind with a generous gullet channel.

[madams747]

the Lovatt & Ricketts that I mentioned is a short hoop tree with a wide gullet for big-shouldered, short-backed Arabs (and Morgans, etc).

Definitely agree on the mohair string girth too - no more galls or even any rubs! I bought a natural color and the bonus is it doesn’t show dirt! It came from ridingwarehouse.com $82.95 and comes as small as 18"
http://www.ridingwarehouse.com/Stillwater_Mohair_Dressage_Girth_1_Buckles/descpage-SWCMDG.html

[mvp]

[QUOTE=digihorse;8480137]
Do a Stubben and a long string girth. The anatomicals will not work. Have a Stubben Genesis CL which has short points and half panels. Works wonderfully. The anatomical girths actually pull the saddle forward on horse’s like ours.
Point billets, wither gussets, etc. make pony VERY unhappy.[/QUOTE]

Hmm. This Genesis has half panels? The CL relates to the thigh block?

I do have a Tristan Special with half panels and short billets that I could try on this mare. I assumed half panels would make things worse… nothing down low to prevent the slide forward into the scapulae.

But I’ll try anything on an experimental basis.

By the grace of God, this mare is a good sport about bad saddle fit so far.

[Lucassb]

I was going to suggest trying a Custom Icon Flight also, with the string girth.

Let us know how it goes!

[enjoytheride]

My friend has a pear shaped 1/2 arab gelding and he fits into a Bates really well.

[no.stirrups]

Saddles sliding forward is a problem frequently caused by a too-narrow tree. I’d try a wider saddle, probably a hoop tree, and you may just be able to skip all the fancy girths and pads.

[J-Lu]

I used to own a 15.1hh pear!

Point billets helped alot. Also, I found that a Nun-Finer neoprene pad in between the saddle and the pad (cut to fit under the saddle) was immensely helpful in keeping the saddle from sliding forward on the pad. Nothing else worked as well.

Interestingly, my cheap-o Wintec Isabel fit her quite well (as assessed by two brand-name saddle fitters who independently told me I didn’t need to necessarily buy a new saddle). Sure, a custom saddle would have been great but alas, that was not in the budget.

Once she was strong enough to carry behind, the problem disappeared.

[kpony]

J-Lu, what kind of withers and scapulae did your 15.1 pear have?