Opinion on Bates Dressage Saddle?

[michal]

I saw one at my tack store that had Isabelle Weirs signature on it...It was $1500 dollars and looked really padded and comfortable. I would like a deep seat for security. Is this a good brand or is Stubben better? I want to buy a second saddle- my other is a western saddle. How do you determine the tree that fits my horse? I use a 15 1/2 seat & semi quarterhorse tree for western - do you measure it the same?

[michal]

Doesnt anybody do dressage?

[cynthia]

hi, michal.

you might try the CBF Dressage Forum BB for this question. they're a fantastic bunch of people, and we all sort of emigrated to the CBF board after the USDF people couldn't get a handle on upgrading the BB software. ;) anyway, the address for the forum page is:
http://www.coolbreezefarm.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

there are already quite a few threads on saddles which you might try searching through to find info on the saddle you're considering. good luck. :cool:

[cynthia]

actually, i just read your post again and realized what you were talking about! i assume that you meant "Isabell Werth", not "Weirs", and i'm also thinking you might simply mean the new Wintec Isabell dressage saddle? i'm pretty sure that Bates has something to do with the production, but the saddle is actually known as a Wintec Isabell. your price quote threw me off, seeing as though the Wintec is synthetic, but now that i think of it, the most recent Dover catalog (or perhaps i was actually *at* Dover when i saw this) had an all-leather version for around that pricetag.

i've heard tremendous things about the Isabell, particularly the synthetic, since it goes for about $650. as a matter of fact, there's a woman who's just posted on the CBF board about the fact that after her week-long test ride, she's decided to keep the saddle. there are several other positive comments in that thread as well, and these along with all the other good things i've heard (not to mention the very do-able pricetag!) are making me lean towards the Isabell for my first dressage saddle.

i'm not even going to get into your Stubben comparison, but hopefully i've given you a decent amount of info to go on. good luck; keep us posted if you test-ride anything and whatnot.

[cynthia]

okay! i've figured it out! as i thought, there are a couple different Isabell Werth-endorsed Wintec/Bates saddles - the Pro ($495), the Isabell ($695) and the Bates Isabell ($1995). i assume that the last one is the saddle you are referring to, and if so, seems you got a better price than Dressage Extensions! Take a gander at this site; it lists all three:

http://www.dressage-ext.com/saddles5.htm#AnchorWintec

[michal]

Cynthia,
Thank you so much for doing the research! I printed out the Bates page. I tried the other BB and registered but when I replied to a message nothing would transfer to the board. Unless there is a delay for it to get there. There is no delay on this one. I emailed them. I am going to ask the Equine shop if I can try it out on my horse. It was so cushy soft- I thought it would be a really nice ride. I would like to see the sythetic one and feel the difference. That ultra suede might be a good idea. This one that I saw did not have that. Might help in the trot & canter for staying quiet. Thanks for your enthusiasm! I really appreciate it. :)

[Heather]

The Bates Isabelle Werth saddle features several of my ideas. I worked with Bates for four years to produce my designs as a synthetic, and indeed, they bought the very saddle that is on my web site as a pattern. Isabelle werth found it much easier to keep her leg position with the stirrup bar much farther back as on my saddle, and which is weher they have put it on the Isabelle.

Bates dropped the project with me last November, and I was initially very dismayed to see that the saddle is very similar indeed to my own, something pointed out to me in an email picked up from a dressage group by my assistant instructor, saying how similar the saddle looked to mine.

My saddle range, however, has been taken up by our own English manufacturer Thorowgood, and will be launched at the BETA Trade Fair at the end of February.

It has the Seatbone saver foam built into the seat, the strirrup bars in the smae place as on my leather saddles, and very carefully designed velcro knee rolls on the GP version, which really do make it just as easy to sit in the correct dressage and jumping positions. I am thrilled with the work that the team at Thorowgood have done, the enthusiasm, efficiency and speed of execution in getting the saddle so well balanced in such a short time. They have been a pleasure to deal with, and I just wished that I had one ahead with them four years ago, instead of Wintec, as the saddles would have been on the market in a fraction of the time.

They will be available through all Thorowgood stockists worldwide.


Heather

[cynthia]

ahem.

[cynthia]

something tells me that Ms. Werth would have little trouble keeping her leg in the correct position even *without* the anatomically-correct SuperBionicCurvatronFantasma knee rolls/stirrup bars you have meticulously designed. :D

just kidding. ;) feeling feisty tonight. which is, of course, different from all those other nights. ta ta.

[Heather]

Perfectly true, Cyn, but even the most experienced riders opt for ease of working, myself included. I would not think of choosing a saddle with the bars further forward, once I realised that they were so much better further back. Why have to compensate for somthing, if you can choose not to?

Heather

[cynthia]

so what do you currently ride in, Lex? i've been using a Kneidersuss (belonging to the owner of my leased horse), which is fantastically comfortable, albeit unfortunately a bit out of my current pricerange! at the moment, i'm just in the very-preliminary stages of my own search, and am considering the Bates Isabell and the Klimke-Miller (Dover has it on sale right now for $904!). i'm not really looking forward to what will probably amount to a loooong & involved process of saddle-searching... ugh. :rolleyes:

[Lex]

Being an avid dressage rider can i recomend sitting inas many saddles as you possibly can before buying one as that is how I found my dressage saddle and it is absolutely fab!!

[michal]

Heather- I have yet to order the seatsaver...on my list of things to get done this week. I do not know what this Thoro...place is. Is this not offered in the US? I like the built in idea. I am into comfortable padding & a deep seat so let me know. I would like to compare to what I have been looking at. Do you have a picture you could post on this website? Or a phone number? Of course it will probably take ages to get into our equine stores to feel & touch huh? Let me know if you have more info. I really liked the quality feel to the bates...are they the same level?

[Heather]

Thorowgood is the biggest manufacturer of synthetic saddles in the world. They are based in the heart of the saddlery trade in the town of Walsall, England, Walsall being the world centre of saddlery trade and manufacture.

The quality of the saddles are very similar to that of Wintec. The Clarino suede used in the seat of my range is actually four times the price of natural suede! The trees used in the TG range are very carefully designed and moulded. Called the Sima tree, they are the only trees in the country to be given the British Standards Institution 'Kite' mark, for consistency of quality and manufacture.

There are no photos available at the moment, as the range is not being launched until the BETA International TRade Fair at the NEC in Birmingham at the end of this month. Then there will be an advertising campaign to promote them.

I am extremely pleased with the balance of the saddles that they have achieved. It is so easy to sit in the correct ear/shoulder/hip/heel balance on the GP as welll as the dressage model. The jumping position is also easier to attain with a flat back over the fence instead of rounding the spine as so many saddles cause, because of the placement of the stirrup bars.

WE have rtested the saddles out on a range of people of different shapes and sizes. For instance my own two working students are Mike, a lanky 6' 3" and Sarah, a tiny 5'. Both of them can achieve excellent flatwork and jumping seats on the GP, and the dressage model is as good as my leather version for positioning the rider. Sarah is a well known junior ompetition rider, in show jumping and eventing and she was very impressed with the Thorowgood, saying that it was actually easier to jump on than her £1,500 specialist jumping saddle!

I am very grateful to Thorowgood for taking over the designs and doing such a good job to get them out at record speed, after four years of disappointment, being told that things were being tested and got on with, and in the end, being dumped. There are many people out there who have been wanting the synthetic version because having ridden on my leather version could not believe how comfortable it is and easy to sit correctly in. At £1200 each, hand made to measure, they are not as affordable as a synthetic at around £350 or less, so many more riders will be able to afford a saddle that will assist, rather than hinder them, to sit in the correct balance.

The saddles will be available from Thorowgood stockists worldwide.


Heather

[ZoeEnglish]

I have had a Thorowgood dressage saddle for about a year which I love. I can attest to the fact that it puts you in a perfect position. Now, Heather, that yours is coming out, I will have to get ANOTHER one. :)

In Washington State here in the US a company called Ansur has developed a treeless dressage saddle which is getting rave reviews. The stirrup bars are also set back farther on this saddle and it has the advantage of being able to fit any horse you put it on. Their website is www.ansursaddle.com. (http://www.ansursaddle.com.) Take a look!

Cheers all--

Zoe

[michal]

Zoey? Is that your name? Anyway thanks for the tip...They are in my back yard practically. They dont have the seat saver built in...but I will check them out too.

[cynthia]

hmm. I think that we MUST have a spy from the Thorowgood Public Relations department on this BB, carefully watching every word that is typed about them and their products.

whyfore else would we have such salesmanship in a... er... "neutral" forum such as this? ;)

[cynthia]

the CBF board has a few threads discussing the Ansur saddles in great detail, some quite complementary.

and michal, why exactly do you feel you really need a seat saver? is there some specific reason? i'm just curious. perhaps i'm the only one in the world that doesn't find herself with bruised seatbones, and for this i am abnormal? ;)

[Heather]

I'm sorry if you feel that I am using the site as a sales pitch, Cynthia.I amsure that there must be many out there who think that I amdoing the same with the book. Well as the book sells for £18.99 generally, and the fact that my royalty is 40 pence per copy, you will see that for many, many hours of work, the reward is extremely small. I make £2.50 out of each Seatbone Saver pad, and for a long time, this was only £1.50. Likewise, I will not be making a huge amount out of each saddle, as it will be sold through TG and I again take a small royalty. For magazine articles, we writers are lucky to get £100 per article, often far less.

I work 7 days a week, often from 7.0am till 11.0pm, given that most evenings are either taken up with answering the couple of hundred emails that I get every week, never mind the 500 odd enquiries I have just had from the Your Horse magazine articles. I have not been able to afford a secretary, and so do all of the correspondence myself. This is why I do not post as much as I would like to on New Rider.

I am not complaining, but I do get fed up with people assuming that just because I am well known, I am well off.

I didn't have to develop the Seatbone Saver for commercial purposes- riders asked me to, having tried out the one that i originally invented for myself. Likewise, I designed the saddles to help my own pupils here on the courses. They asked if they could buy one, as it made their riding so much easier and more comfortable, and so it has happened from there.

Riding would not evolve at all, if people did not use their imagination to design and invent things to inmprove the comfort of horse and rider.

I was annoyed with Bates for using my ideas after four years of dealing with them, and for which I recieved not a penny. The previous company who made the Seatbone Saver had their agreement to make it rescinded because they were not keeping pace with orders since Feedmark took over. This company, Sleepy Hollow, is still making my product, selling it cheaper to the wholesalers, and has not paid me a royalty since the agreement was stopped 18 months ago.I am now going to have to take them to court to prevent them from manufacturing it.

So, I am not just a greedy, grasping opportunist, who sees New Rider as a good marketing opportunity. If I had my life over again, I would not go into the horse business. I rarely have time to ride, and instead, I would have followed another career, and had time to enjoy my horses.

I know that I can make the world a better place for some horses at least, and so feel that my teaching is a vocation, and wouldn't give it up, despite all, but appreciate that teaching itself, would not keep this place running for all of the students who come here to enjoy the sort of horses that they would never get the chance to ride at other schools.

So, I apologise if any of you have been offended by my 'advertisingg', but at least now you know the circumstances.


Heather
S

[Kathy C]

Hi Cynthia,
No you're not abnormal in not getting bruised seatbones, I suppose everybodys anatomy is different - you should count yourself lucky. I can feel certain saddles digging in even sitting stationary so you can imagine what it's like when you start learning the sitting trot. I for one shall be eternally grateful to Heather for designing the seatbone saver as bruised nether regions are now a thing of the past.

[bren]

Heather, its too bad that you had to defend yourself in this forum. Im sure that if you were not directly involved in this product and were raving about someone elses product, there would not have been a problem with it. I see nothing wrong with you letting people know your saddle is out there, and telling about it. I saw no "sales pitch" in your post, you were taking time out of your VERY BUSY life to explain what the differences between your saddle and others are.I for one, applaud you, its very difficult in this world of "anything will do as long as its cheap!" to market a product that has quality and intensive testing and research behind it.
I personally would rather buy something that has a "real user" behind the design than something that a "big corporation" threw out in the market. In the sea of saddles available yours will stand out as quality Im sure. And anyone with a production background would know that the "inventer" does not make a fortune! But surprisingly in most industries neither does the manufacturer. The distributor and the retailer are the money makers.

[Heather]

HI Bren,

And thank you for your kind post. You are quite right, the manufacturers do make comparatively little out of a product, which is why the only manufacturing companies that do make a lot of money, have a huge output of their products- basically make a little but sell a lot. It seems to be the only way even they can make a lot of money, likewise with the publishers of books- they don't seem to make a great deal- as you say it is the retailers who usually want 100-150% mark up.

Think I am in the wrong end of the trade! Perhaps I should just open up a shop or two instead of teaching/writing/designing/ filming/editing tec. At least I would have a 9-5 existence!

Heather

[Heather]

With regard to why I invented the Seatbone Saver, and why so many people need them when they are sitting correctly, is because the construction of a standard saddle seat is illogical. As I have explained in my video, the rider should, it is universally accepted sit in the lowest part of the saddle, as close to the pommel as possible. Now as anyone who has ever tried to do this will tell you, this is not the padded part of the saddle seat. You will end up sitting on the hard slope of the tree, the front arch, doing damage to the bits you would rather didn't come into contact with it, (particularly if you are a male of the species!), with your seatbones resting either side of the seams that attach the skirts to the saddle.


Saddle makers generally know nothing about horses or riding. They are craftsmen who live and work in the city, and do not have any active part in the study of riding.

My own saddle design was around at the turn of the 1700's. Barry Swain, my own saddler who is himself a horseman and a world expert on the history of saddlery, showed me a wonderful old first edition book that he has worth hundreds of pounds, from the 1700's and sure enough, the saddles in use then were very similar to my dressage design. The stirrup bar, way back, big rolls, everything bar the special foam in the seat! Everything does, it seems, come full circle.

This is because the Classical position was still in use in this country then. Hunting began to become the popular form of riding, and so the chair seat became the way to ride, stirrup bars crept forward, because the rider sat toward the cantle with legs stuck forward.

This seat remained the norm, until this century, when Capt. Federico Caprilli invented the forward seat over fences, and the dressage seat once more came back across from the Continent, adopted by those who wished to train for this discipline.

However, the saddlers did not change the balance of the saddles away from that of the hunting seat, with the stirrup bars way to far forward and the rear part of the seat still the only padded area, and why anyone who wanted to sit in the correct ear/shoulder/hip/heel/line of balance, whether for jumping of dressage, had to compensate for the imbalance of saddles, to the point where everyone thinks that struggling to maintain a position is perfectly normal. It shouldn't be!

Which brings me back to why I invented the Seatbone Saver. As most of you know, I developed Seatbone damage so severe that I couldn't ride for 6 months, through trying to sit in the central part of my expensive German saddles. I invented the pad so that I could ride again, but quickly realised when friends tried it and asked if they could have one made, that it had qualities other than just as a considerable aid to comfort. Because it cushions the unpadded part of the saddle seat where you should be sitting, it allows you to sit there with ease, and also because it is suede, prevents you from slipping backwards toward the cantle, which is what usually happens when riders try to sit in the correct place. Most saddle seats are made from a type of foam called Plastizote, which is quite hard and springy. Saddlers then stretch a drum tight piece of leather over the top, and what are you then sitting on? Something which acts as a springboard under you, and on a horse that moves like my big warmblood, Ringo, pictured in the video, most people would need to pack a parachute when riding him on a normal saddle!

It makes far more sense to have a seat which is made from something soft, which does not spring back, and into which you sink, rather than skid about on top. This dampens the upward thrust of the stride, without reducing the rider's feel, and because you sink into the material, prevents the seat from sliding around, so that the seatbones can be correctly used as a pivot, not sliding back and forth in a 'driving' way in an effort to adhere to the saddle.

Hope this explains why so many riders have found the Seatbone Saver of use, Cyn.

Heather

[michal]

Heather,
I really appreciated the details you gave about the stirrup position & history. I understand the small political world we seem to get into in all walks of life. I am sorry that it had to touch you in this way with Bates. (How my original post has evolved!) Please continue with any input you have, I believe you have a passion & who cares if you make a few dollars or pennies out it? It is NOT a bad thing. I welcome any other people that would personally take the time to explain the research behind a product. Isn't this all about sharing research & ideas and support anyway?

[michal]

Cynthia
You have been such a help on this website for finding research & looking things up. It is so much more fun when you encourage and share all sides without attacking. It takes the wind right out of the sails. I do like how you bring in all sorts of options & ideas. Can we see more of your positive insights! It is so much more helpful & effective! I look forward to reading them because you give specifics! :)
The reason the seat saver sounds interesting to me, is because my horse has a really rough gait. He is a short backed arab with a beautiful lope but bumpy trot. My trainer says that I will have to live with some of the roughness because of his conformation...so the seatsaver sounds like it could help in absorbing the bounce. I think it was interesting what Heather said about the possible bounce effect of what the seat of the saddle is made of...I am looking for whatever avenues to help me achieve that quietness in the show ring! Not to mention that I do get sensitive bones after about 20minutes of riding at a trot that is supposed to be a jog. It will take time for me and my horse to balance out better with age, training & practice but the absorbant seat sounds great to me.

[This message has been edited by michal (edited 12 February 2000).]

[This message has been edited by michal (edited 12 February 2000).]

[ZoeEnglish]

Well, I for one put Heather's Seat Saver on my saddle this afternoon and let me tell you, IT IS DIVINE!! I used another seat protector a year or go ago, one that was highly recommended as the best America had to offer in John Lyons' Perfect Horse (the Consumer Reports of the horse world here) and I ended up giving it to my instructor as I didn't really notice any benefit. Heather's version is MUCH thicker and really gives to your seat; also the covering is real suede not the fake stuff. I had actually forgotten to put it on the saddle and suddenly realized how sore I was getting and leapt off to go get it from the car. I was able to ride another good half hour with no discomfort. So keep up the good work, Heather, and please don't go open a shop anywhere and please also get those next three videos out to us!!! (As I imagine you're doing nothing but lolling around eating bonbons these days, eh? ;)

[ZoeEnglish]

Cynthia--what does CBF stand for? I'd like to check out those threads on the Ansur saddle. Thanks!

[bren]

Heather, someone who is
"teaching/writing/designing/filming/editing"
is NOT the type of person who would be happy sitting behind a desk or selling in a store! LOL You'd probably go crazy soon! And we would miss out on your advice and products! :)

[Heather]

Thank you all for your letters of support. I am sorry to have felt it necessary to have to defend my motives, but I am so tired of having my ideas ripped off and exploited by others, and never making anything much out of it myself, and then so many folk in the horse world thinking that I am making a fortune!


I have spoken out on other forums, not just for myself, but for other inventors/authors etc who have been in the same position, but who are not quite as prepared as me to stand up for myself in public.

Anyway,

Thanks once again for your support, and no I won't be opening a shop!


All the best, Heather

[Clare]

Oh my God!!!!

I have just been to Heather's for a course, and missed all this that has been going on - I cannot believe that considering Heather gives up so much of her time FOR FREE to give us advice and help on this board, and also spends so much time designing things to help the HORSE and RIDER that she actually gets questioned about it!!!!

I am amazed that you have booked in for the seminar Cyn, seeing that you already *know* everything, won't you be *afraid* of being given a strong *sales pitch* there ?

Ahhhm *Look forward !* to meeting you in July, Clare

[This message has been edited by Clare (edited 16 February 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Clare (edited 16 February 2000).]