So fed up (again), my poor girl has new white patches I didn't really clock that they were different until last week (The ones from the previous saddle have been fading and I hadn't ridden for a good few weeks when my back was bad) I re-templated where the gullet sits and she's filled out a width since I last did it in August, so I picked up the wider gullet on Saturday. Did 5 miles in the new gullet and she was foot perfect but I am still not convinced as the panel area is dry after a ride
I honestly don't know which way to turn next, I stopped riding western because she was objecting to the saddles (got to vet checking stage and said possibly neurological because there was no muscle reaction or white from that), but she stopped the big reactions with an English saddle (we concluded it was ovary related and without the skirts it didn't bother those). Since then we have had various problems with those, this is saddle number 5 in 5 years. The easi-sit worked well but I fancied an upgrade so brought the newer version in 2014 which then caused a hematoma, I then had a dream team treeless but she got white hairs under the stirrups if I did more than 10 miles in it, then got a thorowgood endurance (late 2014) which worked ok but not great due to short panels and saddler recommended I went back to the easi-sit which worked great until earlier this year when it took the fur off her back and gave white hairs all over it, got a thorowgood dressage (longer panels) but its still not right, we have new white bits at the points and the skin feels thickened under them. I've tried many pads/combo's, sheepskin, cotton, poly pad, prolite, avacallo, le mieux pro-sport, to name a few, and I've had 6 different saddlers look at them over that time, and am kind of running out of ideas of who to call. I am also wondering if its me, the stirrups bars taking the fur off and the full panel white marks all the saddlers have said they have never seen before and can't give me any idea of why.
So for now this means no riding for us (apart from some short bareback rides), I just don't have the money to have something made to measure or to buy one of the top end treeless saddles and I think even if I had a saddler the chance of them having something second hand to fit would be small so I'm just going to have to save for a while.
I honestly don't know which way to turn next, I stopped riding western because she was objecting to the saddles (got to vet checking stage and said possibly neurological because there was no muscle reaction or white from that), but she stopped the big reactions with an English saddle (we concluded it was ovary related and without the skirts it didn't bother those). Since then we have had various problems with those, this is saddle number 5 in 5 years. The easi-sit worked well but I fancied an upgrade so brought the newer version in 2014 which then caused a hematoma, I then had a dream team treeless but she got white hairs under the stirrups if I did more than 10 miles in it, then got a thorowgood endurance (late 2014) which worked ok but not great due to short panels and saddler recommended I went back to the easi-sit which worked great until earlier this year when it took the fur off her back and gave white hairs all over it, got a thorowgood dressage (longer panels) but its still not right, we have new white bits at the points and the skin feels thickened under them. I've tried many pads/combo's, sheepskin, cotton, poly pad, prolite, avacallo, le mieux pro-sport, to name a few, and I've had 6 different saddlers look at them over that time, and am kind of running out of ideas of who to call. I am also wondering if its me, the stirrups bars taking the fur off and the full panel white marks all the saddlers have said they have never seen before and can't give me any idea of why.
So for now this means no riding for us (apart from some short bareback rides), I just don't have the money to have something made to measure or to buy one of the top end treeless saddles and I think even if I had a saddler the chance of them having something second hand to fit would be small so I'm just going to have to save for a while.