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.

 And in the meantime, we've gotten back to riding, but that's a story for another post...

As I totally didn't cover in my previous post, on canter night I started to suspect that Disco's saddle wasn't fitting well. His body language was tense and angry, and I felt a pressure point behind his shoulders, as well as a real asymmetry. As an in-the-moment fix, I shimmed it with a half-pad which made him feel just better enough to get us through.

Afterward, I grabbed the Wow saddle fitting gauge we have and discovered that he's gone DOWN two headplate sizes, with all other components staying the same. 

This makes some sense: I know he's grown 3.5cm in the last 6 months, that he has visually sprouted withers, and that I can't make jokes about him being shaped like a potato anymore. Still - I didn't expect him to go down, and I was grateful to have the gauge to confirm that for me.

Not happy.

I got the headplate swapped out and also reset my Flair panels to atmospheric air pressure before going through the slow, methodical reinflating process as best I could without a second set of hands to do it while I was in the saddle, which is best practice. 

And...

It was like I had a different horse. One I had never felt before.

WHO IS THIS HORSE.

 

At least on straight lines where he could more easily balance, he was forward, he was moving over his back, he was reaching for the bit. He was TAKING ME, finally, which we have been working on for so long.

I felt bad that he had been suffering with a poorly fitting saddle for at least a few months, but I felt vindicated that with Wow, fixing it was as easy as re-measuring him and then spending a half hour in the office swapping out parts. I really don't know how I'd do the young horse journey without it! 

Look at those ears! What a change.

I'm not glad it happened, but I'm grateful that it taught me some things about Disco that I needed to know: that his default response to "something isn't right" is to go #slugmode, and that (I had already been gathering data on this one) he is not at all stoic about pain, which I am so grateful for after Connor, who would rather suffer in silence than let me know something is wrong.

There's still more adjustment that needs done the next time I have a second set of hands, particularly for balance, but I already felt so much more secure and balanced in it even though it was dumping me out the back a bit, and it paid off during the ride: I was much more able to influence his body parts than I have been lately.

Shame Pivo cut off his head here, he was going so cute.

 

That's it - I officially am all-in on Wow. It is so much kinder to the horses to be able to make adjustments like these on the fly rather than waiting for a saddle fitter, or experimenting with different saddles forever. I'm going to be setting a recurring task on my to-do list to re-measure him every month from here on out so that I can stay on top of changes like this while he finishes growing.

I am still, after nearly 15 years, regularly in awe of the power of the blogger community. Whether it's Kate being in my life or the friends I couldn't have gotten through my divorce without or the most perfect Eva/Disco saddle getting dropped in my lap, I owe so much to this community, it's wild.

Lyss, formerly of Gooseback Riding and now of Chantilly Tales, commented on my blog post about Wow saddles to say that she had two barnmates that both had Wows they were looking to sell, and long story short, it ended up that one of those saddles was in my and Eva's exact specs (which are very likely to also be Disco's specs). The seller's horse had hated it and she only rode in it for a couple months before getting something else and putting it in a closet, so it was nearly new.

Not unattractive either, but those f****** blocks (we'll get to that)

Wow has three front-to-back tree shapes: curved, semi-curved and flat, with flat being the most rare, and naturally that's Eva's tree shape. Of everything on the saddle, the seat/tree is the most expensive, so it's the only thing you really want to get right. Everything else (panels, flaps, blocks, billets, headplate) can be easily/relatively cheaply swapped out later.

Because of that, I didn't ask too many questions or request hardly any photos once I learned it was a flat tree in my size. The price was fantastic, the saddle was gorgeous, and the tree was right, so I could deal with anything else being wrong. Lyss ended up facilitating the entire sale for both of us through email, which was awesome.

It wasn't until it got here and I saw the underside of it for the first time that I realized the likely reason why the seller's horse had hated it: that saddle's panels have a combination of features that my own fitter won't sell, and in fact she confiscates them anywhere she finds them, because they create a pressure point on the horse's back that she has seen lead to pain and injuries in horses many times over the years. Her words: "Do not even sit on her in those panels."

The good news? My fitter can add a stitchline to these panels to make them safe to use, AND I had just ordered new panels for Connor's Wow that are basically the same as Eva's except that they don't have tabs, which serve to lower the panel on wider horses with less withers.

Thanks to Wow being Wow, I spent 5 minutes in my living room with a screwdriver moving panels between saddles and voila, I had a saddle I could start Eva in. It fits beautifully, aside from Connor's no-tab panels sitting higher than they should on Eva.

The fit is just freaking perfect. I am in awe of that little plastic Wow saddle fitting gauge every time I see this saddle moving perfectly with Eva like it was custom made for her. Dr. M and the gauge told me what parts to look for, a blogger helped me find it, and from the moment a saddle was ever first put on her back, it fit her.

Such a lucky horse

I love it for me too. The balance is incredible and it sort of disappears underneath me. The only thing I don't love are these giant honking thigh blocks, which do move, but not enough and not in the directions that I want them to.

When I came off Eva, Kate joked that those blocks were like a pivot point for my body as I flew off, lol

Fortunately, Dr. M is both a leatherworker and a Wow enthusiast, so short term, I am just going to take the blocks off the saddle, and long term, she is going to help me fabricate a custom block. Like anything else on the saddle, the blocks are modular and are held on by two flat screws.

You can just tell my body wants these blocks out of my way. With them gone, I will be able to move the stirrup leathers forward and my leg is going to hang in a great place.

So, a big hearty THANK YOU to Lyss for helping me find this saddle. I think I am officially on the Wow train after this experience!

Hahaha- no joke! Two saddles in one week, eh? Stacie didn't know how right she was in the comments yesterday.

 

Just 48 hours ago, even I had no idea I'd be buying a Dressage saddle this week. And the dramatic way it went down ended up being a fitting conclusion to my TWENTY-FIVE MONTH  LONG Dressage saddle search.

This does make me giggle, I'll be honest

See, I've been saddle searching for longer than I've been riding with CGP, so she didn't know about my...saga. On Saturday after my lesson, I told her the whole story and about my working theory that Connor prefers the short tree points and flexible front panels of the CWD. "Can I look at it?" she asked. She never had taken it off his back and handled it before.

 

After inspecting it she said "Oh my gosh, I've never seen a saddle with these features before. This is brilliant, I think your theory is exactly right, and I think Kate [the Society of Master Saddlers' fitter I worked with two years ago and absolutely adored] can do this and all of your other requests. Patrick Saddlery can build anything custom." She ended up taking a 5 minute video demonstrating everything and sent it to her.

On Sunday, I got a text. "Hey, Kate can do everything on your list, and she just happens to be driving through here tomorrow. Can you get back here by 8am Tuesday?" Kate lives many states away and is normally only in our area in spring and fall, so it was a dang miracle that she just happened to be passing through two days after I talked to CGP.

This place again??

So I took Tuesday morning off, we drove over Monday night after work, I crashed with my friend Nicole for the second time in 3 days, and at 8am sharp on Tuesday, we met with Kate.

The first saddle I rode in was Patrick's brand new monoflap with Velcro blocks, which was one of my wish list items. No, scratch that: that was a must-have. I have commitment issues with fixed blocks on *mumblemumble* thousand dollar saddles. Velcro AND monoflap or bust.

It has like a pocket on the front of the saddle for the block, but the rest of the flap is a mono

But this saddle had long tree points, and while Connor did everything I asked in it, I recognized that feeling I know well by now, where he'll begrudgingly do what I ask, but it's not as effortless to ask for or for him to perform as a given movement is when I ask for it bareback or in the CWD.

It was especially obvious in the reinback and ToH. The Jen of a year ago, less skilled and less certain in my convictions of what "right" feels like, might have settled for it. After all, he was Doing The Thing, right? But I stayed firm on my working theory: I knew he was capable of Doing The Thing more easily, more freely, and better. I pushed Kate to let me try something with more shoulder freedom.

She came back with a saddle that had short points and long gussets, and it took less than a minute. I walked, trotted and did a single reinback, and Kate said  "Wow, I see it! I just got goosebumps, that reinback! I know exactly what you're talking about now, you're exactly right about the short points and shoulder freedom." 

She didn't have many saddles with her because this wasn't an actual saddle fitting trip, but she knew one of my teammates had a saddle with short points and short gussets, and she ran out to ask if she could borrow it.

Teammate just happens to be 5'2 and maybe 120lbs so it wasn't an awful fit for me

For the first time in this whole saddle search, the angels actually sang, for both of us, when I rode in my teammate's saddle. Every single movement I asked for was effortless. His breastplate stayed up with almost no effort. Kate was practically cheering. "This is why I make such a point to really listen to the rider, you know your horse better than anyone," she said. "I live for these moments."

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Afterward, I told her Mary's parting words to me which were "Don't let that fitter sell you a saddle with long tree points," and Kate said "She was right. I normally cringe when I see French saddles because they're often fitted poorly, but Mary knows what she's doing, the fit of your jump saddle is brilliant. If she ever wants to get back into saddle fitting, I would give her a job and train her. She's good." 

Side note, I was low-key anxious Kate was going to tell me the CWD didn't fit and I would have, I dunno, thrown myself off a building if she had. So the fact that she approved of its fit so thoroughly felt AMAZING. I can continue joking I would sell this horse before I sold this saddle.

Hearing all that from one of the best fitters in the country (objectively - she's certified in the UK through a many year process on saddle fitting that we don't have an equivalent for in the US) felt so, so, SO good - that Mary's brilliance was recognized by an accomplished pro, that Mary and I were both right, and that I wasn't crazy for sticking with #dressageinajumpsaddle this long and standing up for my horse.

"Short gusset" refers to the pillowy looking thing on the front of the saddle not going down as far as it could.

So in the end, what did Connor need?

• Short tree points, to give the big meaty part of his shoulder as much room as possible to push back as each foreleg swings back toward the tail
  
• Short front gusset, for less bulk behind the shoulder
  
• No point billet. His billets need to come off of the waist of the saddle straight down to an anatomic girth because of where his girth groove is and how much he hates his shoulder being restricted. We only did up the point billets in the demo saddles enough to keep them from getting in the way of my feet, the only tight billet was the rear one.
• Short-ish seat. I joke he's a dachshund, but he's still a pony with a relatively short back.
  
• Serge panels, to allow for maximum give again for his shoulders, among other benefits
  

An example of a serge panel, which is entirely wool on the underneath of the panels. They are warmer in the winter, don't get damaged by sweat like leather panels, conform better to the horse's back and most interestingly, they can be directly adjusted through the panel using tools, which I thought was cool.

 

And in the end, what did I need?

• Velcro blocks on a monoflap - non-negotiable. See previous statement re: commitment issues and also my barrel-shaped horse and my short little legs.
• A stupid short flap. I don't know what the actual length will end up being, but she's taking a ton off the bottom and front of the flap as shown on my teammate's saddle above. I think my exact words were "What's the shortest we can go without causing problems anywhere?"
  
• A well-balanced saddle and a good fitter that understands biomechanics and Dressage riders and will come to this farm twice a year to adjust it

That's it. That's all I needed.

 

My saddle is going to have a lot less of that useless extra bit of flap sticking out down there, since I have shorter femurs than this teammate, and I also have a pony instead of the imported 16hh+ WB this saddle was made for.

I spent the rest of Tuesday designing it (since it's custom, there's one flat fee and no upcharges on anything you can dream of - this is harder than it sounds!), plunked down a deposit, and now we wait approximately 8-10 weeks, COVID-willing.

I have more thoughts on this, but this post is long enough! I am SO EXCITEDS!!!

 I got a pair of Dubarrys for $50, and took so.  many.  lessons. with CGP. This was also the first time she ever rode him.

Last week, we had our sporthorse vet out (who is not local, as opposed to our emergency vet, who is local).  I had asked for a lameness exam, chiro and a teeth float, even though he's still never taken a lame step in his life.  First I told her what had been going on:

Connor telling me he wants to be a Western Pleasure horse in December, PC: Austen

- Saddle fitting festival since October
- Riding mostly in the flapless since the beginning of November, in an extended trial to make sure everything was good before I buy
- Started to notice NQR in late November, abrupt change. Change occurred right after we REALLY started to push Second Level work with GP trainer
- Goes better on a loose rein than with contact
- Bit or bitless doesn't make a difference
- Even when he's going well with rein contact, which still happens sometimes, his back just never really loosens up and I don't have the forward button
- Never taken a lame step, but the left hind has always tried to get out of work if possible

We HAVE had SOME good rides since the NQR started. Flapless here

She started by running her hands all over him, and found the culprit almost immediately: back pain, confirmed.  Before I even told her what kind of saddle it was, she found two areas of soreness: one along the spine under the rider's seat, and one at the very back of his saddle patch:

Saddle patch, for reference.  I've noticed some ruffled hair there just in the last few rides, so this didn't come as a complete surprise to me. PC: Austen

When she asked to see the saddle on him, two points on the saddle lined up with the areas of soreness: the back edge of the panel seemed to be digging into his loin, and the top inside edge of the panel in the channel area was digging diagonally into his spine.  She felt like the flapless would fit great on a full-sized horse, but even though Connor's back is relatively long, the uniquely long panels are poking him in a place they wouldn't poke a full-sized horse.

My own thoughts: it's possible that the saddle fit his conformation in November aside from the panel length, but as the back edge got more and more sore, he lost muscling in his back, and then the area of soreness under the rider's seat developed as a secondary issue due to the muscles there shrinking.

(The teeth and chiro were interesting in their own right, but not ultimately related to the NQR, and I'll cover them in a different post.)

TEETH DAYYYYYYYYY

Because I do genuinely love this saddle and we're so far into this process already, I'm giving ESS a chance to figure it out.  Via video call, their owner/founder taught me how to palpate his back and she was able to see his back muscles spasm when I hit the sore spots.  She assessed the fit of the saddle relative to the sore spots and ultimately said, "I've been fitting these saddles for 20 years and I've never been this stumped before.  He's clearly sore and it's clearly the saddle, but nothing jumps out at me as to why, and I don't know why nothing showed up on the pressure pad either."

We just finished another round of Nexium and he's back to being ears up under saddle all the time, even with the soreness, so that's good.

ESS's founder and my vet both recommended the same thing: go back to the CWD for a while, let him heal, go from there.  The vet also gave me a stretching regimen for him.  They do not want me to stop riding, because it takes active work to help his back recover from the soreness, just chucking him in a field won't help.  ESS is going to go back to the drawing board with some ideas also, and has asked me to do pressure testing on the CWD just for the sake of having a comparison on the same back.

Vet also recommended using Back on Track before I ride, and I was like "AWESOME because the sheet I got for practically free in Canada finally arrived this week!" This shade of bright navy is definitely his color

How do I feel about this?  Mildly upset that my little buddy is hurting, but also, not beating myself up over it, because this is exactly why I wanted an extended trial of this saddle.  Better to have him tell me "no" like this than to drop [mumble] thousand dollars on a saddle and then figure out he hates it.

I'm not throwing ESS the bus, the fact that he's back sore doesn't mean this is a bad saddle.  In fact, I still freaking love it and don't want to ride in anything else.  They've been nothing but honest and amazing to work with, with the founder telling me she will not take my money until my horse is going better than ever.  However, it's possible that as much as I love this saddle, the panels are just not right for Connor's particular back shape, and I'll walk away if I have to.

We'll see!

The most interesting part of this whole saddle fitting process is that what I thought I wanted isn't what I wanted - but I'm not sure I would've figured that out if I didn't ride in 36 saddles over six weeks.

Before the fittings, I thought I wanted a narrow twist, flat seat, low cantle, minimal block.  Mostly, those were knee-jerk opposite reactions to my last saddle, which I know now was waaaaaaaay too small for me, but I didn't know that then.

I hate everything about me in this saddle looking back on it!  Funny how that works.  PC: Austen

I thought I wanted a flat seat, but it turns out I just want an open seat, and those two things aren't necessarily related.  I learned that I hate anything that cups my butt, where the rise of the cantle starts quickly behind me.  I began to see the surface of the saddle as a work surface: sometimes in Dressage you need to slightly change your position to get things done, and too small of a work surface limited my ability to do that - and I'm not talking about seat size here.

This felt appropriately flat and open.  Custom Wolfgang Omni (older version)

But that desire for a large work surface doesn't mean I want the saddle to encourage me to flop all over the place - I want the default balance of the saddle to put me in a good place, but give me options.  A closed seat does not equal more rider stability - some closed seat saddles put me far more out of balance than some open seat saddles.

I learned I really don't care how tall the cantle is, as long as, like I said above, the rise doesn't happen quickly.  Some saddles with very tall cantles felt very open, and some saddles with very short cantles made me feel trapped.

Short cantle, but I felt trapped in this

High cantle, but I don't even notice it

I learned I actually prefer a slightly wider twist.  I encourage anyone who has ever said the words "narrow twist" to keep an open mind where this is concerned, because I was saying it without truly understanding why and I don't think I'm alone in that.  I don't mean I want the twist so wide my hips hurt, but I learned that I don't like it when the saddle twist is more narrow than the width of my pubic bone.  I want the saddle to fill up the space between my legs (that's what she said?) and not make me feel like I have to contort myself to"snug" my thigh into the saddle, as MW would say.

WOW - wide(r) twist.  Liked it.

(And according to KB and Eq Saddle Science both, twist is a function of the horse's anatomy and not the rider's preference, so take that for what you will.)

Finally, blocks became fascinating to me.  I was wrong in thinking that big blocks always equal "seat belt saddles".  I rode in saddles with big blocks that you'd never notice, and with small blocks that felt like they were shouting at my knees "YOU SHALL NOT PASS".  I learned that I want the support of a good block, I just don't want to be pinned into place.

Both big and small blocks can be bad blocks

The difference between a good block and a bad block was not the height or length of the block - it was whether it asked or demanded a certain position from me.  A good block gently supported my leg in a good spot, and I didn't notice it.  A bad block said, "We're gonna put you HERE and you're NOT GOING TO MOVE, got it?" Even if it was the right leg position for me, if the block forced me to stay there, it was a bad block.

Good, big blocks.  And it should be noted that if I had bought the Patrick, we were going to custom shape these blocks, both by taking some foam off the upper right corner (as you're looking at them here) and by reducing the height of them by 1/2" because my thigh isn't that tall (in terms of how far it comes away from the saddle)

Also, interestingly, the difference between a good block and a bad block was so subtle - millimeters of foam that needed shaved off at the top or single degrees of angle.  The fact that there are some saddle makers that do not offer any customization of block position on their saddles is absolutely infuriating, and I will name and shame CWD and County for this because I think it's stupid that they ask you to drop many thousands of dollars on a saddle you can't really customize.  Custom, Patrick, Eq Saddle Science, Stubben and WOW all allow custom block shapes and positions with almost no limits.

And with that, that wraps up my saddle fitting series!  I hope you guys found this helpful.