saddle fitting: a tale of two watches?

Are you familiar with Segal's Law? It's an adage that states: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Well... I kinda feel that way right now.

mare gets measured. and is surprisingly unhappy about it!

See, I worked with a professional saddle fitter last winter when I was first saddle shopping. My understanding of her general philosophy is that the thing horses hate most about ill-fitting saddles is a lot of movement. That horses are more comfortable with a close-fitting saddle that stays put and is held securely in place by a tight girth.

She deemed Isabel a narrow, and went on to say that the vast majority of horses wear saddles that are too wide for them (complete with lots of padding, of which she's not a fan). The fact that nice used narrow saddles are much harder to find vs the many many MANY wides you'll see at every single tack shop seemed to corroborate this idea, somehow.

making a tracing!

Fast forward a couple months (and 3 re-flocking appts) later to when I ultimately determined that my beloved new-to-me Bates isn't working. The mare is still sore, her back muscles remain totally atrophied (the shelf of her ribs is fully visible, even tho she dressages like this), and the saddle rocks over fences.

I like and respect this first fitter, but determined all the same that I needed to change tactics. A 4th re-flock in something like 8 months seems ridiculous. Like throwing good money after bad. So I called a different fitter (also highly recommended, just like the first).

more tracing!

She palpated the mare for soreness (and got no reaction, which... well... strikes me as unusual) and did tracings. The tracings confirmed much of what I already know - Isabel is unevenly developed, is distinctly narrower up front than in back, and has like, zero back muscle. The tracings also confirmed what many of you have suggested - mare face might be narrower up front, but the gullet plate we had in there (the yellow one) was still too narrow at the points.

Ok fine. So I was wrong. (Tho in instances where I lack personal expertise, I will always take the word of a trusted professional before going by something I read on the internet. It just turned out in this instance that the trusted professional was also wrong).

too narrow. probably a few people are looking at this picture, nodding their heads like, 'yup i thought so!'

But here's where I start to get a little fidgety. Because the medium plate (black) looked like a match on the tracings (sorry no pic), but the fitter actually wanted to go even a size up from that - to the blue medium wide, and fill in the extra space with lots of padding (plus she adjusted the flocking a bit too).

So that's where things are with my jump saddle right now (and how it was for our recent xc schooling). The extreme opposite from what the first professional recommended. Which is a little hard for me to swallow. Obviously the first fitter's approach didn't work for Isabel. But how is it possible that two professionals in the same niche can have such diametrically opposite conclusions about the same exact horse and saddle?

but this.... this doesn't look right to me either?!?

Well, I can tell you why - it's the freaking horse world and if you ask two horse people the same question you'll get three answers. Ugh.

So idk. I'm not an expert on saddle fit. The way the Bates is set up now (with the MW plate and all that padding) doesn't make me feel very warm and fuzzy... but the mare seems comfortable enough for now, and I doubt that a couple rides (like our upcoming show...) will be enough to make her any more sore than she'd normally be if there IS a problem.

lots and LOTS of padding

The fitter took a look at my dressage saddle too and tried both the MW blue plate and the M black plate, ultimately deciding that the black was a better fit in that instance (provided I use a half pad). I kinda wanted to try the black plate in my jump saddle too... but it didn't happen this time around.

We will see. She felt pretty confident that getting Isabel out of those narrow trees would be a step in the right direction, even if we ended up going a little too wide. I figure we'll see how she goes for the show and in upcoming schooling sessions. Plus we'll have her chiro appt in a few weeks so I can get input at that point as well.

Ultimately the Bates continues to just be not the right shape or size saddle for Isabel - it's got the wrong panels, it's too long, it's just.... a poor fit. I haven't yet pulled the trigger on asking this fitter to start shopping for me but it's possible that we'll go in that direction. Ugh lol.