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.

As you all know, a few months ago I gambled that Eva and Disco might be the same tree size and shape when I bought a saddle for Eva by way of a blogger. Drumroll please...

Wow, did THAT ever pay off. It sits beautifully on him. And in a stroke of perfect timing, the original panels just got back from my fitter, who I paid $145+shipping to add the missing feature to them to ensure that that didn't cause pressure points.

Mmmmm, the way the panel follows the shoulder is so delicious.

While I was trying that on him, I also tried a couple of Connor's other saddles on him, even though I knew they would be all wrong. I just had to know.

My beloved CWD looked like a tiny little hat on top of his withers. But it's getting lots of use on Connor these days between his part leaser and the two kids that ride him regularly, so it will be sticking around.

And the Patrick, as suspected, is also a big no. Connor and Disco are different back-to-front tree shapes, and even when the Patrick was built, when Connor was at his fittest, Connor was narrower and had more of a wither than Disco. Disco may yet sprout some wither, since he's only 3.5, but not enough where this saddle will ever fit, and I'm at peace with that.

 

I've known for a while I should sell it. It's still nearly new, since I all but retired Connor a few months after getting it, and Connor's retired dad bod won't be using it. Seeing it on Disco was the push I needed to sell it and then plow those funds into a Wow jump saddle for him.

 

SO, any short legged riders out there looking for a Dressage saddle, I would be willing to make you quite a "blogger special" deal on the Patrick, especially if you save me from dealing with listing it. I only want to get out of it what it will take to get Disco a jump saddle, which is nowhere near what I paid for it.

2022 Patrick Saddlery Liberty II

17" wide monoflap

Velcro pocket for knee blocks (comes with small blocks, can order other shapes)

Extra short flap

Wool-flocked serge panels

Would best fit a horse that is wide with some wither and a semi-curved front-to-back tree profile. Will not fit a flat back.

Hit me up via the contact form on the blog if you're interested or if you know of someone who might be interested!

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!

So, a few months ago, we had my former college professor (chair of the department, now retired, and my advisor, the woman that got me into Welsh Cobs) out for a Wow saddle fitting "clinic."

Dr. M fitting Ivan the Wonderful, First of His Name

Dr. M is not a rep for them, just a die hard fan who had her life changed by them (quite literally, she almost had to give up riding until these saddles solved her knee and hip pain, and bonus, made her horses go better than ever too) and has spent some time intensively shadowing a very talented Wow fitter (ah, retirement).

Last weekend, now that three of us have bought Wow saddles of our own, Dr. M came back to play again, and this time that fitter was on hand via video, with Dr. M on-site as her smart hands.

(And lest you question Dr. M's credentials, she has multiple hundred milers under her belt, including a completion on a borrowed horse at the Tom Quilty in Australia, which I believe made her the first American to ever finish it. The woman knows well-fitting tack, even if she's not a career saddle rep.)

Using a Wow saddle fitting gauge to estimate which parts Missy needs

 

If you're not familiar with Wow, a quick primer: they are completely modular (so every part can be swapped out), and they have a firm yet flexible carbon fiber tree with no tree points thanks to the way the Flair panels attach to it. This gives it a massive weight distributing bearing surface compared to most English saddles, as well as an incredibly narrow waist under the rider's thighs.

Taking one apart to swap a part out in the barn aisle at my first Wow fitting in 2019

You may remember that I wasn't super crazy about Wow when I had a different fitter out in 2019. I didn't sit in anything that Wow'd me (pun absolutely intended), I didn't develop a rapport with the fitter, and I didn't love how much tinkering it required.

Barnmate Deb sitting on a seat, tree and panels with no flaps

Well, my feelings have changed after finding one in Connor's specs that's older than dirt and practically free (in saddle terms). Connor has told me he likes it, I like it, and I also like that since I'm going to be riding a young horse again soon, I'll be able to swap parts in and out as he grows rather than buying a whole new saddle once a year.

Homeslice is suddenly going like he could get my last two Bronze scores next weekend. Note that this was before we adjusted the flocking so it had slid forward and put me in a chair seat. Much better now.

 

It's not that I don't love my Patrick. It still disappears into the background when I ride in it the way a good saddle should, and it's beautiful. But every time I walk into the tack room I find myself walking out with this damn 15+ year old saddle I got for less than I paid for my Fairfax bridle.

I have a suspicion Connor loves this tree. I already know he hates his shoulders feeling impinged upon from our previous saddle search, and he's so willing to lift his back and move forward in this saddle, it has surprised me.

About to go for a test ride to adjust the airbags after taking the saddle partially apart to change the billet positions.

I expected to hate it for myself - a long, straight flap with a long, straight thigh block - but I really don't. I feel so balanced and snugged in around him in it, and I don't notice the blocks or the flaps. This is in part because I'm able to choose which stirrup bar I'm using, which gives me enough room behind the blocks for my Mary Wanless knee.

I'm on the further back stirrup bar to give my knee room. You can also see here how there's practically nothing under the rider's thigh, allowing my short thighs to really snug in around Connor without any extra bulk.

I am also changing my feelings on tinkering. I've had the Patrick for years now and have never managed to get the flocking adjusted now that I'm not going to CGP's monthly. My barnmate has likewise had a hell of a time getting her much more local fitter out to adjust her Loxley. As former saddle fitter BFF Mary said, "Wool is the superior flocking choice unless you can never get it adjusted, then it's the worst."

I should hate everything about this, but I don't

Truth is, in this part of the country, being self-reliant is necessary. And with this fitter and the Wow saddle fitting gauge blessing the fit of the main components (tree shape, tree/seat size, headplate, panel shape/size), it's nice to be able to say "Hey Leah, I think this is riding a bit low on his weak side, do you mind adding a pump of air to the back right panel for me?" Rather than, you know, waiting half a year or more for a fitter to do that same thing!

Wow saddle fitting gauge. It's a lot more nuanced than I'm about to make it seem, but if the pendulum in the middle points straight down both when the horse is standing normally and when you do a belly lift, you know those components are probably correct. The front piece of the gauge is swappable based on headplate shape (they come in U, V and UU shape profiles and 11 different sizes).

Not only that, but being able to ride past the mirrors (bless) and see if it's popping up or bridging or shooting my leg forward makes me much more confident in troubleshooting minor flocking changes I need to make.

Finally, my barnmates are getting on the Wow bandwagon too, which means we have a slowly increasing pile of spare parts to play with. Want to slap a bigger seat on your saddle or try a different sized headplate or a set of panels that sit a little lower? Get a new horse that requires a flat tree instead of a semi-curved tree? Someone probably has you covered, and is also more than happy to give you a second set of eyes.

Video fitting our haul-in's young horse

I don't know. But I'm rolling with it. And if you happen to have any Wow spare parts for sale...

"Jesus take the wheeeeeeeeeellllllllll," I yelled as Connor absolutely bombed down the grid Mary had set up the weekend before. You could practically hear him yell "Cannonballlllllllllll!" right back as he ignored me completely and just Did The Thing. His way.

Thank you for flying Air Connor, shut up and hold on

Connor had more impulsion than either of us knew what to do with that day, so even though I was in a Dressage saddle and had my leathers Dressage-length, I sent him down the grid anyway. Homie needed to burn some energy, and he's schooled enough that I knew I could let that grid and the consequences of his choices do that for me.

Part of the reason, I think, that he had so much impulsion was that damn Wow saddle. I told myself I was buying a cheap old whatever for Disco, and even though it's not yet professionally adjusted to fit him, Connor has been telling me loud and clear he likes it.

The mirrors are really helping too. Nothing like coming down the long side, seeing that his nose is crooked, and fixing the hand that's preventing it from being straight.

 

It's got flaps down to my ankles and blocks that I should hate and might actually be 20 years old and is the old style tree so it weighs more than an anvil and I paid basically $800 for it, so of course he likes it better than the Patrick I spent the better part of 3 years trying to get.

Giving me the world's tiniest collected canter over trot poles and then using that power to jump me out of the tack.

Like, he's going ridiculously well and is happy doing it. He's doing better collected canter than he ever did when we were showing Dressage. The kind that makes me think maybe I could still get my bronze on him.

Not super collected here, but this is a crazy well-balanced left lead canter for this horse. And no underneck.

But I'm not putting that kind of pressure on us. In fact, the only pressure I might be putting on us is a speedbump-level event in November with the rest of my barnmates. He's really enjoying jumping, so why not?

Things that are lost in this GIF: me yelling "That's not how that's supposed to work!" as he cantered all of the ground poles and hit every single one.

We are just having fun. Both of us. And that feels good.

Finally did it sanely. No cannonball. Good boy.

I know I said I'd do some more Royal posts, but these saddle fitting posts are getting backlogged!  Gotta get them out.

Brand: WOW Saddles
Cost for Fitting: Trip fee (not split among very many people) + fitting fee: $225
Number of Saddles Tried at the Fitting: 4
Number of Saddles Trialed: 1

WOW Saddles wouldn't have even been on my list if it wasn't for Teresa, who strongly recommended them.  She also hooked me up with the fitter, who just happened to be coming to Indiana from Virginia right in the middle of my saddle fit extravaganza, but I'm glad I took a look at them.

WOW Saddles is a modular saddle company out of the UK.  Everything about every saddle can be changed out.  Suddenly hate the seat?  Buy a different one.  Feel like you need a more forward flap?  Sell your flaps and buy new flaps.  It's the most low-risk saddle buying experience ever, because anything can be changed at any time.

Just dismantling and rebuilding a saddle in the barn aisle, NBD #wowthings

The fittings take four hours because the fitter (who is a very good fitter and not just a sales rep) has to build the saddles on-site as you determine what you like/dislike, so we had a lot of time to chat.  Interestingly, the fitter's primary business is a fancy used saddle business you've all (I guarantee) heard of before, and she's slowly winding that down to focus exclusively on WOW. 

Besides believing in the positive changes she sees in the way the horses react to WOW, she also got disillusioned with the traditional saddle market by customers bringing her almost brand new custom-ordered saddles to consign that didn't work for the horse/rider once they arrived, that were being sold at a huge loss.  I am starting to develop some strong feelings on the saddle industry that are along these lines myself after trying all this stuff, but that's a post for another day.

I ended up sitting in a total of four saddles, although that's kind of a misnomer because some parts of the first saddle carried through until the end because I liked them.

Saddle #1, shown with the "air tubes" sticking out so that the flocking could be adjusted quickly.  Those are taken off of the saddle for regular use.

After taking some measurements with a special fitting kit, she nailed the tree and panel fit right out of the gate, and we kept this configuration through the rest of the saddles she built.  All of the panels I rode in were Flair, but they do have wool flocked and a foam-Flair hybrid panel that supposedly rides more like a French saddle.

On saddle #1, I liked the seat, even though it had a wider twist than the others.  However, I hated that flap, which was so stiff, it felt like I had to work to transmit aids to Connor.  I also hated the knee roll position.

Saddle #2

On Saddle #2, she gave me a slightly narrower twist, more of a skirt over the bar region, and a much softer panel that I vastly preferred.  She also changed the billet placement to where it could take my regular girth instead of the WOW H girth, just so I could feel the difference.

WOW H girth

Interestingly, with the same tree and panel configuration, the back of the saddle moved substantially more with the billets in the traditional place vs. the H girth.  Makes sense, since it's linked up much further back to where the billet is actually underneath your seat.  But part of me wonders if the H girth (and similar billet configurations, like Devoucoux) are able to hide fit issues because they keep the back of the saddle pinned down.

Connor went well in this saddle, especially considering he always goes terribly during saddle fittings, and we were on hour 2 at this point.  The headplate on the WOW saddles actually twists with each backward swing of the scapula so the horse never feels restricted by the tree points, and I think he really liked that.

Finally we took that same saddle #2 and put their "flapless" flaps on it, although she only had jumping flaps.  Because I also have the Eq Saddle Science saddle, I wanted to give this a try.  If I bought it, I could switch back and forth between regular flaps and these.

Plz to ignore the ghetto girth rigging we had to do on this one, this is not how it's supposed to go

I didn't like this very much. Those are pretty stiff and fairly long panels to be "flapless" and while it did give me the "horse body" feel under my boot top, it didn't feel any different from a regular saddle in the "leg pit" area, as MW would say.

WOW Saddles
Likes

• Almost risk-free saddle buying experience due to the interchangeable parts
• Connor seemed to like the trees
• The saddle could change with my preferences over time
• The saddle seemed to move with the horse well
• The seat was well-balanced
• The H girth distributed pressure well across the entire saddle

Dislikes

• I could see myself incessantly experimenting with different configurations for the rest of my life
• Leather quality was just okay
• In terms of position, I never got that "coming home" feeling in it, but then again, I could probably get there with interchangeable parts, so IDK how to feel about that.
• Heavy!  So heavy!

Right now, I'd place the WOW in the #2 spot, behind...

(tune in tomorrow)