No doubt about it.
There is no doubt about it at all. Zippy's new panels are a definite success. First, he didn't swing away from the mounting block this morning. For several weeks he has taken one or two attempts before he would stand for me to get on. Second, he walked off immediately free in the shoulders and back. Straight into it, no wriggling at all. Third, when he did get uppity at 20 minutes in, he barely hunched his back, and I didn't have to spin him, all I did was say "no!". Then he walked on in the same direction that he was going, which is a first; I have always had to turn him away to get him moving again.
So I don't have a doubt in my mind that it's the best £100 I've spent on horses in the last six months. And how interesting - we had a saddle on him that few people would have said would cause any problems, but it was. Zippy wasn't going to complain about it seriously until he also had a bellyache and a toothache, up til then he was "just a little cold-backed" for the first five minutes. How many horses out there are uncomfortable in their saddles but soldiering on in silence, and no-one knows?
Now of course I have to get hold of the new saddle that I bought so that I can get shorter panels onto his jumping saddle too. And then buy another set as soon as they come up on eBay to make a permanent pair for his jumping saddle (because you can't swap 18 inch panels onto a 17 inch seat!) Then sell all the spare stuff. One saddle and one pair of panels. All good fun :-)
C
posted by cptrayes @ 2:54 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Very astute commentary about horses being uncomfortable in their saddles. So many probabaly are.
I know for sure, years ago, when I first had Russell R., that he would always go better bareback. To this day, I wonder how he would have been in a treeless saddle--or at least one that really fit him.
The generous, tolerant horses just soldier on. The sensitive kind, like Zip, try to tell us there is something wrong. We need to learn how to listen.
It wasn't very difficult to hear Zippy in the end :-) Something about my head nearly hitting the beams holding up the barn roof gave me a fairly big clue :-)))) In a way it's lucky he had a bellyache that day, otherwise he may just have carried on without a big protest.
C
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