Sv: CorrecTORen prisvärd?bra eller dålig?
Howdy Cowgirl:
How´s the round up going?
I´m back in the saddle YAAAAHOOOOO
Continental came out after my Saddle Fitting Day´s. Crates...eeeeh, they are very well made saddles popular with the show crowd, I tried too fit several quarters with them, useing every padding tecknik, build up, military folds, stuffing whatever between a Navaho blanket on each side of the withers... everything I could think of and asking the horse owner too scratch their head too and come up with an idea
.
The saddle just would not sit still, they tended too roll and being some what low in the gullet, desighned for low hand reining they tended too lay on top of the wither bone.
The bars had a funny twist too them, kinda wide and flared.
I don´t know what tree is used?
No, I was not too keen on Crates
A lot of good stock saddle makers on the market with pretty good fitting saddle for both the horse and
Just give me 1 good horse with a good fitting saddle,
Thats easy on my ass
Continental uses Steele trees, same as Crates does... same as tons of others on the market. A whole lot of rocking chairs. The saddles may be well built and the trees may have a good longevity, but that doesn't help much when they don't fit many horses.
The REAL Billy Cooks (not to be confused with the ones made elsewhere with his name) are about the only popular saddles over here with a decent tree, but they're few and far between, so you're back to importing from the US without being able to test on the horse. But even if we had a saddle that fit 100% we'd still use the CorrecTOR underneath to improve the weight distribution and to be able to adjust balance when needed, such as on a very downhill Quarter.
If you are someone with difficulty finding a saddle that fits you, which we both here in this house are, your choices are really limited. Then you add the fact that the majority of the saddles for sale in Europe have the same style tree, and what's a person to do? Or what if you have a hard to fit horse like one with a straight back or a downhill build (lower in the shoulders than the rump, common with Quarters and breeds with a lot of Quarter in them, as well as some other breeds).
You might be able to luck out with some less common brands (custom makers, etc.) but you can't see the quality unless you get to where it is and can't be sure of fit until you try it, so you waste thousands shipping and driving to try or buy saddles and your horse suffers every time. And it isn't easy to leave your horse in the pasture while you wait for the perfect saddle to drop into your lap. Even if you are lucky enough to be able to afford a custom made-to-measure saddle, you've no guarantee it'll work. We've seen enough of those with obvious issues both in Western and English saddles.
With the CorrecTOR, you can work with what you've got and have a pain-free horse. Later when you can afford better you can upgrade to a better fitting saddle that fits the rider. Then you need few or minimal shims in the CorrecTOR to make it work but still have the better weight distribution offered by the shields.
The Continental we've got right now turns out to be both too wide and far too curved for this horse. When the horse is in top condition, we need all the shims in the CorrecTOR. When the horse is less trained, we need to pull one set of front shims. Now I understand your concerns about the saddle rolling around and moving all over, especially if you have a barrel-shaped mare like our Quarter. But even with all the shims in, our saddle is stable. It barely shifts when mounting from the ground, even with a rider with mounting difficulties that really hangs on the side on the way up. And it doesn't budge at all going up or down a steep hill or sideways across one--even without a rear cinch or breast collar. Anything we tried without a CorrecTOR on this horse was all over, both mounting and on hills.
As for the too wide tree and high head carriage, the horse lifts its head in reaction to the pinching at the withers from the too wide tree and often too flatly angled bars. A horse will also lift its head to SINK its back when the tree interferes with the back. Look at a horse grazing and note how its back lifts when the head comes down and sinks when it comes up again. You've got the symptoms right but the explanation wrong. It isn't bridging but a tree that pinches or interferes with the use of the back.
Once you get that tree out the way in the middle, the horse can lift its back again and get to work. We've experienced once with our own horse and several times with customers' horses that no rear shims were needed in the initial fitting. The horse will have learned not to lift and engage its back to avoid the pain and discomfort from the saddle. But then a month or two down the line, the rear of the saddle starts lifting because the horse found out it could use its back more, so you need to add rear shims. And with our own horse we've seen the back become less swayed with time as well as filling out behind the shoulder blades. All with the same saddle as we rode her in to begin with. We wanted to test it thoroughly before switching to a saddle that was better for the rider (and with more fit problems). We'd gotten her as a 4 year old, so thought she was just built that way, but it turns out the saddle she'd been started in didn't fit any better than the ones we had tried.
The disadvantage of Orthoflex was that it was a mechanical system with moving parts that weakened and broke. They also started "adjusting" themselves in a short time and you'd have to have it refit all the time. And if you look at the copies available today (as opposed to the originals), there are several flaws in the design where they simplified production to lower the prices. The CorrecTOR works similarly but without the weaknesses of the mechanical system and without the need to buy a whole new saddle to get the benefits. You can use the same CorrecTOR under multiple saddles (like if you have one for show and one for training or saddles for different disciplines) or start out with a lower priced saddle and gradually upgrade as funds become available. And it's easy to modify the fit to use the same one on several horses. We just made a list of the right config for each horse/saddle combination and swap the shims around before we saddle up.
If you want a detailed saddler explanation of how the CorrecTOR fixes the too-small tree, give Len Brown himself a call and let him explain it.
When it comes to saddle fit, the only thing you can really trust to be honest with you is the horse. Despite using the CorrecTOR, we palpate our horses regularly to monitor any changes in their reactions. It gives us a quick heads up to find out what is going on if something changes. Unfortunately most average owners don't know how to interpret what the horse is telling them or don't know how to "ask" the horse if it is uncomfortable and assume the horse is acting out or has temperament issues instead of getting to the real cause of the problems. The hardest is when the horse is started with a problematic saddle (even one that is only minorly off) or is one they recently purchased, so the owner doesn't have something to which to compare the behavior. More fortunate are those horses whose owners have a chance to catch a behavior change and get to work finding the cause.
It doesn't help that when having a vet, chiropractor, or massage therapist out to check the horse, they don't always know all the places they can palpate to find answers. So people spend fortunes getting horses tested for lameness issues or adjusted by the chiropractor or massaged when the whole thing could have been solved by doing SOMETHING about the saddle. I should also mention that health and hoof problems can cause similar pain reactions, so it can be a good idea to get the horse checked out by a vet anyway and maybe a farrier to be sure it isn't something else.
I really don't care what that SOMETHING is as long as it works for the horse. I only care about the miserable horses who are suffering needlessly because their owners don't know how to find out what is wrong or just don't care. We meet far too many that don't care, like people who know the saddle they're using is soring their horse (with white spots as proof) but still use it to go do ranch sorting and every other class available at shows and clinics for months without trying anything.
It's all about the horse and rider combination. If it works for both of you, there is nothing to worry about. But it helps to have a lot of information and to know what other options are out there if the traditional ones aren't working for both of you.
