From: Damara
Dear Jessica, my horse has a very sensitive back and I am looking for a treeless saddle for him. I have found two, one is for endurance riding and the other for dressage. I am not sure which one will be best because I do not yet know what I want to do with this horse, but he is a wonderful horse and I am sure that he could do anything he wanted to. I do know that he seems to have a low threshold of pain, things that bother the other horses only a little seem to bother Phantom very much. Anyway I know that you usually agree with vets, and they with you (VBG) but I am hoping that this time you will disagree with my vet. He is old-fashioned and does not think that a treeless saddle is a good idea. I have shown him pictures and brochures, and explained to him how the saddle works and how it avoids the cruelty of putting hard substances like wood and metal onto the living flesh back of a sensitive animal. But he does not believe that Phantom will benefit from this wonderful new technology. He is a very good vet in other ways, and an old friend of my father's, he is like another father to me, and I do not want to be rude and argue with him, but I don't think that he understands horses as well as I do, and their sensitivity. Phantom is the most sensitive horse I have ever known. He is a National Show Horse, that is half Arabian and half Saddlebred and he is tall and slender with a long neck and long back and very beautiful and elegant. He is a little thin because he is so sensitive, so his back is a little bony and too delicate for metal and wood. I want him to be happy and comfortable. Can you help me make my vet understand why I am saving all my money for this new saddle? And can you help me understand why a man who is supposed to care for all horses cannot see what is intuitively obvious, that something soft and gentle will feel better to the horse than something made from hard and unforgiving material like metal and wood? Please help me. HORSE-SENSE is my first place to look for information, and you have helped me so many times before. My vet needs to understand that time does not stand still and we have new options now. Damara and Phantom
The trouble with things that are "intuitively obvious" is that they are so often wrong. It's "intuitively obvious" that the earth is flat, for instance... if you stand on the pavement and look about you, there is no way to understand INTUITIVELY that you are standing on a ball rather than a flat disk. It's also intuitively obvious that the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night - but we know that this isn't what actually happens. ;-) It's "intuitively obvious" to any child - and to a great many adults - that no sensible person would voluntarily allow another one to take a sharp needle and push it into an arm.... and yet we all eventually learn that the discomfort of an injection is far outweighed by the risk of not getting the injection.
So what does all this have to do with your horse and his saddle? You've described a tall, slender, narrow, sensitive and fairly delicately-built animal with a low tolerance for pain. A narrow, delicate, long-backed horse is always going to be at risk for back pain and back injury, and anyone riding such a horse has to be very careful of its back. I understand your reasoning regarding the treeless saddle - it does indeed SEEM obvious that something without a tree made from metal or wood might be more gentle. However, I fear that in this case too, the "intuitively obvious" is wrong. The saddle-tree was invented to keep pressure off the horse's spine and help the saddle become more stable on the horse's back. A well-fitted saddle will allow a horse to carry saddle and rider comfortably and well, with the weight and pressure affecting the large muscles on either side of the spine - NOT the spine itself! When you take away the tree, you take away the spine's protection, and you also create a situation in which the rider is almost certainly going to have to use a much tighter girth.
Saddle-fitting is an art. It's not easy to do, but it's the rider's responsibility to see tha the horse's saddle fits the horse and does not hurt the horse or interfere with its ability to move. I know quite a few people who bought treeless saddles for their hard-to-fit endurance horses and/or their hard-to-fit dressage horses, and found that the horses went much better for a little while - and then began to get sore. My conclusion, after seeing this pattern repeated over and over again (with different horses in different disciplines getting different amounts and types of work with different riders), was threefold:
1. It seems to me that a treeless saddle offers a wonderful opportunity to analyze the fit of the rider's other saddle(s). A horse that seems instantly more comfortable in a treeless saddle is showing the rider that the previously-used saddle did not fit properly or was not otherwise suitable.
2. However, I think that the rider's responsibility doesn't end with determining that the horse's regular saddle doesn't fit well! It then becomes the rider's obligation to find a saddle that does fit the horse well, and that the horse can carry comfortably, with the rider on board, for long periods and/or for periods of intense work. (It's also the rider's obligation to realize that saddle-fitting is an ongoing issue throughout the life of any horse.)
3. The fact that horses wearing a treeless saddle all seemed to become sore eventually brought brought me back full circle - to the saddle WITH A TREE, that prevents the horse's delicate spine from damage from pressure. In other words, the main use I have seen for the treeless saddle has been as a diagnostic tool - not as a solution. I'll grant that such a saddle might work very well indeed for a well-muscled, strong, short-backed horse with what the Quarter Horse people call a "double back" - in other words, looking at the horse's back from above, one would see a channel (the spine) with a ridge of heavy muscle on each side. I would not be so optimistic about using a treeless saddle on a horse that, seen from above, showed the spine as the highest point of the back. If your horse's back is bony and delicate, as you say, I would be very worried about causing him damage by putting too much pressure on the spine. I personally would be very hesitant to use a treeless saddle on any horse that couldn't be ridden comfortably ("comfortably" for the rider - AND for the horse) bareback.
I understand what you mean about it being "intuitively obvious" that metal and wood trees are too hard for a horse's back, but consider these things: First, the trees are well-padded. Second, the tree keeps the horse's spine safe. Third, it's a mistake to rely on what seems obvious. Consider the shoe - not the horse-shoe, but the kind of shoe designed for humans. It would seem intuitively obvious that a shoe with a steel shank would be far too hard for a delicate human foot, with all those bones... and all the pressure coming to bear on the bottom of the foot with each step! It would seem intuitively obvious that such shoes would be uncomfortable and cruel, and that any human wanting to be comfortable would do better to discard those shoes and wear simple, unstructured, flat rubber flip-flops instead. And if the human in question were to be putting on shoes only to walk ten paces from the house to the swimming pool and back again later, the flip-flops might be just fine. But for any serious activities on foot, whether walking or hiking or just standing at a counter all day, the human would be cursing those flip-flops and begging for a pair of solid, supportive shoes with a steel shank.
Your horse is lucky that you care so much about his comfort. But before you spend all of your money on a treeless saddle, talk to your vet again, please. If you'd like to learn more about equine backs and saddle fit, I recommend a video by saddle-fitter Dave Genadek. For $25, you'll have a wonderful lesson on saddle design and saddle fit - and you'll be able to play it over and over again (and lend it to your vet?). Dave has a website - I don't have the URL handy, but you can probably find it by searching under his name. I do have the telephone number you can use to order his video: 1-800-449-7409. It's well worth the investment.
If you do decide, when all is said and done, that you really want to purchase a treeless saddle, and if it turns out that your horse can be and remain comfortable while wearing it, that's great. Just remember that monitoring the horse's comfort level in all parts of its body (and mind, and spirit) is an ongoing process. If you let your horse tell you, from day to day, what makes him comfortable, you won't go wrong.
Jessica
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