Cob Jockey

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Disco ended up spending three weeks at his breeder's in May and June, and covered four mares. He got a glowing report card - he was good to handle, good to the mares, and "stopped when I said stop" which is "the most important thing".

Disco and his breeder, Lisa

He also stayed at a good weight thanks to some very careful nutrition management on my part before he left, and on Lisa's while he was there. Maintaining a good weight isn't easy for an active breeding stallion anyway, and doubly so when I realized he went through a growth spurt while he was there.

My eye was immediately drawn to his withers when I picked him up - where did THOSE come from? In three weeks he grew a centimeter, and his topline is now a completely foreign shape to me. Or wait, is it familiar...

I brought him home a few days before we had a Wow fitter coming to visit, and opted to not even try to ride until she had a chance to evaluate his saddle fit.

She is a wonderful fitter and is a Wow specialist, but works on all kinds of saddles. She's coming back this fall if anyone local wants to get on the schedule.

She said his flat tree still suits him (phew, that's the most expensive part), but she did think he needed a slightly different headplate (3U instead of 3UU) and that he no longer needed tabbed panels. Tabs lower the contact surface at the front of the panel for a wide horse, and to my utter shock, Disco isn't a wide horse anymore.

I wasn't done being shocked. When she evaluated Connor (the first time he's been evaluated by a Wow professional), she said he could really do with a flat tree too. And that he and Disco are currently the exact same size in every part.

I joked when I bought a baby out of Connor's full sister that I was hoping genetics was on my side in terms of Disco fitting into the same saddles as Connor, but Lisa's herd tends to have two back shapes: native pony flat-and-wide or easily-shares-saddles-with-warmbloods. Connor has always been in the latter camp, and up to this point I thought Disco might be in the first. Can you blame me? Look at these photos from when he came home 7 months ago:

No withers here, ma'am, just a potato. (November 2024)

I tried Connor's saddles on him back in November, and the fit was terrible:

In Disco's own saddle, he's gone down from being a 4U headplate/borderline 5 headplate, to a 3U in the last 7 months.

November 2024, 4U headplate

And finally, the whole thing is a love letter to Wow. Renske said I needed a different panel shape for him now, and instead of getting a whole new saddle or new panels, I just took my spare pair of no-tab DXWG Size 1 panels out of the office, we swapped those onto the saddle and spent a half hour getting the flocking (air) just right. Boom, done. No matter which dimension he grows in and which direction he grows in, the saddle will keep changing with him.

25 minutes of w/t/c is EXHAUSTING guys, but look at that saddle fit.