Cob Jockey

Anyone know of any small adults or children that are in the market for a great Dressage saddle?  16" short flap Adam Ellis, marked MW but it's a W after being professionally widened in 2018. $1200 but very negotiable especially to a deserving junior.

Stamped MW but widened to W professionally in 2018.

Flocking professionally adjusted in 2018

The only blemish, these two faint scratches on the cantle that were there when I bought it

My best friend Mary was a CWD saddle fitter for a few years after college - got flown to France to spend a month learning about saddle craft and fit and taking a practical test on it at the end, the whole nine yards. And she was GOOD at it too, just an amazing eye for both horse and rider movement.

All pictures are from that ride, but before she made any changes.  PC all photos in this post: my mom <3

On the way home from Land Rover, she came out to the barn with me to play with Connor.  I told her I had been fighting with my Dressage saddle for a few months, and had recently been riding without stirrups a lot because it felt better to me that way, but I couldn't articulate why.


After I warmed up she put me on a 20m circle and had me do a few laps each direction with and without my stirrups at the trot and canter.  She asked me if my trainers are constantly telling me to pull my foot back, and I said yes, all of them do (even Kate!)

"Okay, stop.  We're going to shim you."

Side note, how bout that square halt.  Also Mary is so good at wrapping polos, she makes me want to not even try it myself.

She put a fleece half pad with rear shims on him and had me get back on and do the 20m circles again.  I could not keep myself from exclaiming "HOLY COW.  It feels like the seat is an inch bigger and my stirrups are a hole longer!  What did you do?!"

I mean I knew what she did, but I wanted to know why. 


"Your saddle fits both of you great, honestly.  But the stirrup bar placement is an issue for you.  Because your thighs are so short, the stirrup bar is going to be set too far forward for you on most saddles, which is going to pull your foot forward.  I put the rear shims in to lift the back a bit which puts your leg in the right place, which is where it hangs when you ride without stirrups too."

Now, this is the same fit issue the saddle fitter identified in July, and we widened the tree to improve the situation, but clearly we didn't go far enough.


Yesterday I had my weekly lesson, and the change was incredible.  I felt like I was balanced over his back and like the saddle wasn't in my way.  I got the same feeling riding with stirrups as riding without.  My trainer said it was some of the best rhythm and relaxation she had seen out of us.

I bought a shimmable half pad of my own, a Prolite tri-pad, and I'm looking forward to playing with it tonight.

Underside shown

It's a great feeling to head into a biomechanics clinic this weekend knowing my saddle isn't in my way anymore!

My saddle came back from having the tree widened on Friday, and...


It's life changing.  No exaggeration.  It fits us both like it was made for us.  It's such a huge change from the way it felt before, even though I wouldn't have told you it fit badly before.  Now I know.

So balancedddddddd...!

It's not going to make second level any easier, but it's going to stop making it harder than it should be, and I'll gladly welcome any roadblock removals I can find right now.

Do you remember how many Dressage saddles I found myself and trial'd before Ann found this one for me?  Yeah, me too.  I probably spent the cost of a new saddle on shipping all the wrong trial saddles.

I've only ridden in it twice so far, but both times, Connor felt great.  Jury's still out on whether the saddle is the cause of that, but at least he doesn't not like it!

Nothing - NO-THING - makes even contact front-to-back on this horse the way the Adam Ellis trees do (at least in Dressage saddles)

This was so worth it. Without it, I'd be fighting to stay centered on a saddle and a horse that both wanted me to the left.  And Connor couldn't have been happy in a tree that was a cm too small for him. 

With the Gary Mundy leathers and the new TSF StretchTec neoprene girth, in the size and style Ann recommended.

If you're like me and you don't have a brand agnostic saddle fitter anywhere near you, I highly recommend working with Ann from Equestrian Imports.  She's the one that both found and remote fitted this saddle for me originally, and traveled to my barn from Florida for the in-person fitting and reflocking.  She always has a good inventory of high quality used saddles too. 

It's been a good experience start to finish with her.  She's not cheap, but to have someone nail the fit this perfectly the first time, I know she's saved me a lot of money in terms of vet bills, lessons and trying all the wrong saddles.

I really wasn't sure what to expect from my very first hands-on saddle fitting ever.  The lady who remotely fit my Dressage saddle last year came to Indiana last weekend (she comes up about once a year from Florida), and I jumped at the chance to have her take a look at my Dressage saddle in person.

I didn't get any pictures from the fitting because I was pretty involved with it, but this is from when I got it in March of 2017.  He's filled out quite a bit in the shoulders since then.

It was fascinating.  The fitter is from Ireland, and really knew her stuff.  Immediately she noted that my saddle was generally a great fit for both of us (whew), but it was lower in the back than the front.

There's a lot going wrong in this picture from September 2017, but you can clearly see how the saddle being too low in the back pushes my pelvis back and my knee forward into the roll.  I didn't know that was an issue until I felt the properly adjusted saddle on Saturday.

She also noted that the flocking was very compressed on the left side compared to the right, due to me sitting harder on the left side.  This explains a LOT - as I became aware of this positional flaw since about January, I've been trying to fix it, but I've been fighting the saddle while I try to fix it, and with the horse, the saddle and my own body pushing me onto the left, that's a lot to overcome. This was an easy fix, they adjusted the flocking on the left a couple of times and I rode in it and it was AMAZING how straight and level it was.  It also didn't slide off to the left anymore.

When I first realized my left side issue, riding T in January 2018.

Next, to fix the saddle being lower in the back, we had two options.  The first was to try a ThinLine half pad with rear shims, and this was a stunning improvement.  I noted that my knees weren't as much in the knee rolls anymore, and it was very easy to stay straight in the saddle.  My trainer and the fitter said the knee roll change was very visible.

May 2018

I would have thought that was the best it could get if she hadn't mocked up the second option, which was a tree widening.  For that, she took the ThinLine off and shimmed it just naked under the saddle with some special shims.

She also used a TSF StretchTec neoprene girth to keep the saddle in place, which it hasn't been doing lately (it's been sliding forward).  She explained that she's found that people with the leather TSF original girth like I've got now can't get it tight enough to keep the saddle in place, and she asked my trainer if that sounds familiar with me.  My trainer laughed.  Yes, yes that's a problem.  She tells me almost every ride my girth is way too loose.

My previous original 24" TSF, which I owned before my 18" StretchTec TSF, which I owned before the 22" original TSF I bought with this saddle at the recommendation of this saddle fitter (18 months ago).  My Facebook status with TSF is "It's complicated".

When I got on with those two adjustments, it was absolutely miraculous.  It felt like she'd lowered my stirrups by a hole (she hadn't), and it was almost annoyingly easy to stay centered in the saddle, as my pretzel body tried to fight the symmetry it wasn't used to.  It was suddenly far less work to sit the canter, and I could really get my leg around him in a way I haven't been able to before.

More from last summer, can't wait to see a side profile once I get it back!

She and my trainer watched me ride several laps like that and everyone agreed that was the better option.  At the end, she said it was a testament to what must be really flexible hips that I rode in that saddle the way it was as long as I did.  She said most people wouldn't have been able to ride with as straight of a leg as it kept me in when it was too low in the back.

So, now my saddle goes to Florida so it will be waiting for her and her assistant when they get back from their marathon cross-country saddle fitting trip.  Can't wait to get it back!

In the meantime, I'm reunited with this gorgeous thing. <3

I have spent so much of my Connor-owning life trying to find a (used) Dressage saddle that fits my small self and his wide-and-curvy-but-not-broad back (on a budget), I feel like the tagline of this blog could be changed to "Saddlefitting the Welsh Cob".

A history of the Dressage saddles Connor and I have owned:

16.5 W short flap County Competitor

JenJ's old Wintec which met a sad end when a mouse made a nest in it.  I still have this, in my garage, because I was so grateful to her for giving it to me, and I can't bear to throw it out.

Thorowgood T8

Devoucoux Makila

And those are just the ones I've owned.  I've also tried a newer County Competitor, a Prestige 2000D, a Prestige something else, an Ideal Jessica Pony, a Stubben Juventus D, an Albion of some sort, and my barnmate's Adam Ellis.  None of those fit except that Adam Ellis, which fit surprisingly well.

(Of course it did.  The first Adam Ellis I ever rode in was JenJ and Paddy's Adam Ellis, and JenJ and I are twins.  In everything except getting a 10 on a movement in a rated test, DAYUM GIRRRRL!)

Trying the barnmate's Adam Ellis last summer.  #foreshadowing

With that in mind, part of the reason I finally agreed to do a proper saddle fitting was that I had found a 16" MW Adam Ellis on eBay, and when I did a Google search on it, I found that the same saddle was actually also listed for consignment with, you guessed it, my trainer's remote saddle fitter.  I was so tired of trialing saddles though, I wanted some validation from a pro that it might fit before I spent another $100 on two way shipping.

Long story short...

I feel like the texts between me and my personal saddle fitter/best horse friend Mary say it all:

I'm waiting to make a final decision until my lesson on Thursday so I can give it a fair shake (homeboy got his spring shots yesterday, so I didn't ask for much), but I'm 99% sure this is The One.  And it's cheaaaap.  Pinch me, I feel like I'm dreaming.