A Visit to the Saddle Shop

I can't ride bareback forever, so since Ted's services were in demand at Brian's Saddle Shop to build a roof for the deck on their guest cabin, we loaded up Beamer and went for a saddle fitting as well. If you are ever in the area, which is on Highway 3 a couple of miles before Jaffray B.C. make sure you stop in for a visit. Just look for this sign:

I tried out a number of different trees trying to find the best fit. I really recommend taking your horse to a saddlemaker if you want the best fit for you and your horse. As you'll see in the following photos, there was something with each one of these trees that didn't quite fit my boy.

This one was tight at the top of the bar.

This one fit everywhere except the gullet, it was too low. Without the pad the gullet touched his withers.

This one has good gullet height, but the front of the bars was entirely the wrong angle.

This one was also too low in the gullet and too tight in the bars.

We finally settled on this Wade tree as being the best fit. I didn't get a photo of it sitting on the saddle pad, but it gave it just enough lift so that those bars were at the same angle as Beamer's shoulders. The bars lay evenly along his back, and the flare on the bars will give him freedom of movement in the shoulders. We talked about design; I want the Association basket stamp and pitchfork border on the skirts and jockey, and corner tooling on the fenders with our brand. I'll have to go back and get the ground seat built to fit, then the leatherwork can start. I'd like to help as much as possible, but it's a two hour drive, so we'll see how much I can do.

We kept Beamer in a pen across from a mare, of course he had to check her out thoroughly, but these are nice stout corrals that are designed for rodeo stock and bulls, so all he could do was talk and sniff.

How'd you like to have this rodeo arena in your back yard?

When we went in for supper, there was a little visitor demanding his supper too.

He even liked his belly tickled.

I took these shots from only about a foot away, he isn't camera shy!

Meanwhile, Ted's project was coming along nicely.

This is a really neat little cabin, it's where we stay when we're there.

That's Beamer in the pen below.

I left him there to finish the job and hauled home, where something else was awaiting us, but that's tomorrow's story.