we have a winner!!!!

I officially own a saddle - the Bates is mine!! Yay!!!!

We had our appointment with the fitter Gina Perilla yesterday for the final 'pre purchase exam,' if you will haha. She shared some of my concerns about the length of the saddle on Isabel's back, but felt like it was jusssst inside the acceptable range and therefore worth a shot, especially since I like it so much. 

She noted that the saddle seems to be only recently converted from CAIR panels to wool and the panels are still pretty squishy. This means that the panels can be expected to compress and flatten out a bit in a fairly short time frame (2ish months, probably). 

She stuffed 'em up with wool and spent quite a bit of time going back and forth from Isabel to her tool kit trying to get the balance just right. Isabel (unsurprisingly) has uneven muscling from side to side and is sore and tight in areas - esp along her right flank. Hopefully a properly fitted and balanced saddle will start to help that! 

The fitter recommended continuing to use a folded up no-bow wrap up front to ensure there's enough clearance. We'll have a follow up appointment in about two months, at which point the panels should have compressed and settled more into their post-CAIR shape and Gina can build the front up so that the no-bow isn't necessary.

She also chided me on the importance of a *tight* girth. Essentially I'm not doing Isabel any favors by leaving the girth loose enough that the saddle can move around while I'm mounting or riding around. Point taken. 

In any case - I'm super excited about the saddle!! There was zero movement during our test ride - AND during our celebratory post fitting trail ride :)

I obviously had to break out the new-to-us hackamore for the trail ride too... and poor Isabel wasn't thrilled about having her pic taken lol.

She was good tho - I still have excellent brakes in the hackamore, which was a relief haha. The ponies got a touch excited around one section of the trail and Isabel got acquainted with the curb chain. Yep those brakes work. Sorry princess!! 

All in all, it was an excellent weekend and I'm super excited to have this whole saddle situation resolved!!