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All riders and horses will benefit from a correctly fitted saddle. However, heavier riders (I am referring here to women weighing 180-plus pounds and men weighing 250-plus pounds) often face a different set of challenges in finding a saddle that fits themselves as well as their horses.

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Is it working for or against you and your horse? Let’s unpack our tack. I’ve always found the subject of tack to be very interesting. The tack we use on our horses is in many ways symbolic, marking a rider as English or Western, and beyond that, categorizing them more specifically as hunter, jumper, dressage, reining, cutting, barrel racing, endurance and so on.

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‘Tis the season for buying young horses. Along with bringing the new prospect home come questions of when to start the youngster, and whether it makes sense to invest in a custom saddle. First, I will clarify the term “custom saddle.” I believe that true adjustability in a saddle is more important than whether it is “custom.” An adjustable saddle can be changed to accommodate the horse’s conformation as the horse matures, and that saddle is a worthwhile investment. Otherwise, you will likely have to buy several saddles over the course of your horse’s lifetime to make sure the fit remains optimal.

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Are you ready to leave your bit behind? About 15 years ago I first went bitless with my mare, Diva, after a particularly passionate foray, on my part, into natural horsemanship. Riding with a rope halter and lead rope felt a little like wearing a thong bikini to a public beach, with many people waiting to see if this get-up was actually going to do the trick once we hit the water, or in this case the trails.

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I smiled, walking past the airport hat kiosk, en route to a judging adventure at an exhibition in Eastern Canada. I’d be wearing several hats and judging a kaleidoscope of classes at the show — equitation, road hack, reining, Western riding, working hunter, pleasure driving, driven dressage, conformation, showmanship, miniature horses… and more!

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When mankind began riding horses, and saddles were developed to help keep riders astride their mounts, the original purpose of the saddle was to support the horse in his job. Saddles were designed to accommodate the demands placed on horses during activities such as combat, transportation, and sport. And since riding in long skirts was not practical and it was unbecoming for a women to straddle a horse, side-saddles were created to allow women to ride.

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The Horse Habit located at Kemble, Ontario, was established 29 years ago by Ellen O’Reilly, with the mission “To bring quality equipment to the horse and their human.”

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The perils of putting symmetrical saddles on asymmetrical horses - “We were not surprised to learn 60 percent of the horses in our 490-horse retrospective study had larger measurements on the left side of their withers,” says Dr. Katrina Merkies, researcher and associate professor at the University of Guelph.

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Therapeutic tools have been used to prevent and treat horse injuries for many years, but cutting edge therapies continue to be sought out by riders to improve their horse’s health and performance. Twenty years ago, the technology of the day for icing the legs of Olympic and World Championship level event horses was giant rubber boots filled with ice water attached to noisy pumps that burbled bubbles up through the boots

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Why do we have them? What keeps us practicing them? As I write this article, I find it ironic that I am laid up on the couch with a lower back injury, brought on by the age-old tradition of lifting, hauling, and generally doing way too much when my body wasn’t up to the task. From my recovery position, it seems fitting to attempt to grapple with the rather sticky topic of traditions, and why we often feel so compelled to stick to them. I’ve touched on this a little in my past articles, but today I want to really dig in and unpack why and how traditions become traditions and what keeps us practicing them, sometimes long past their best before date.

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