Remedial saddling explained

Remedial Saddling

Remedial Saddling is something that BALANCE has been providing and teaching about, since 1993 and is beautifully equipped to provide to horse owners today.

The term 'Remedial Saddling' refers to a slightly different approach to working with a saddle when a horse is underdeveloped in its muscle through the saddle area, but is expected to recover that muscle and therefore, change in width and shape. Examples of situations where this can occur would be:

• after the horse has been laid off work from injury, particularly if box rest was prescribed
• after a horse has been ill and lost condition and weight
• with a young and underdeveloped horse who is expected to grow
• with an elderly horse who has changed in shape and muscle mass
• most commonly after a restrictive saddle has been used for more than a few months
• a horse that has been under-fed for the amount of work it has been asked to do

If we use the example of the chestnut horse shown above, we can see that the horse has got so little healthy muscle in the saddle area now, that the bony withers and the back of the shoulder blade are exposed and very vulnerable to further damage.

However, if you look at the rib-cage and can you imagine what the saddle area would look like if the horse could recover its natural and healthy muscle mass?

To fit a saddle using outdated, conventional methods, the saddle fitter would want to find a saddle that has a tree width that is narrow enough to make sure the saddle has about 3 fingers of clearance above the withers. It would have to be very narrow than, because, as you can see, there is almost no muscle to support a saddle and keep it lifted up!

The trouble is, that in this case, a narrow saddle is exactly what caused the horse to lose all the muscle in the first place!

In fact, this horse had started its ridden life at the age of 4, with a healthy, well-muscled back. However, when it was fitted with its first saddle, the saddle that was bought was not as wide as he was. The tree width gave plenty of clearance over the wither, which had seemed to the owner and the saddle fitter the most important thing and the saddle was a pretty colour and the right price.

However over the next couple of years, the pressures and the blocking of healthy blood flow to the soft tissues under the saddle caused the horse to lose muscle mass. The saddle fitter had to use extra flocking (with made the panels even harder) and eventually a narrower tree as the horse's shape changed so much. All the time this was going on, the horse's performance, attitude and soundness were all deteriorating.

Fortunately the owner read an article about the BALANCE methods
of saddling and realised that her horse was in trouble and needed
some help with a different approach to saddle ‘fitting’.

She contacted BALANCE and learned why her horse was losing
muscle, losing its quality of movement and didn’t want to be ridden
anymore. Armed with this information and the right support, she
was able to turn things around before any permanent damage had
been done. With careful management of the way the horse was
ridden, in conjunction with the use of a well designed saddle, in a
width that that was wider than the wasted shape (but not so wide
as to be touching the withers), used together with a therapeutic
padding system, her horse started to recover the lost muscle and
recover its lovely movement.
The muscle wastage had become so extreme that her horse
needed to move into a wider saddle before it had recovered
completely.
Horses who are helped to go through a good Remedial Saddling
and Management process will show significant changes to their
body shape, that should be recorded and monitored and in this
case, the muscle wastage (see black and white image above) was reversed, and the horse was able to return to the healthy state and
movement it had had at the start of its ridden life!