Saddlessssssss

I sort of doubt Roxie's mom quite knew that she was adopting myself (and now Zoë!) when she initially was like "come ride my Roxiecorn!"

the Roxiecorn herself!

Hahahaha but now she's stuck with us. Joke's on her.

See, all my horses ever prior to Zoë were 50% thoroughbred or more. Which is fine. It just means that the same general sorts of things worked for them.

Pro tip: approximately 0 of those things work for a Zoëbird.

i mean i guess if you duct taped like 3 ottbs together, you'd almost get this wide

And you know. Because I'm way too ocd to let things be "just ok" and must always tweak and get them to "quite good actually", I can be a little high maintenance.

I mean. Y'all ought to be REAL DAMN IMPRESSED that I have gone this long with a black bridle and brown saddle.

Anyways. My saddle doesn't fit. My back up saddle isn't something I want to ride in every day if I don't have to.

a very cute 4

HOWEVER my baby mare is four and basically just doubled in size in four months and, oh, I know NOTHING about saddles wider than like medium narrow.

That makes buying things kinda disingenuous, given her rate of change, as well as expensive because I have no frame of reference for what I'm looking at.

But also I can't just not have a saddle.

i'm really not a great bareback rider

Naturally I texted this entire monologue to Roxie's mom and then started sending her saddles I found for sale online like I DONT KNOW WHAT ABOUT THIS.

Lucky for me, she is a total hoarder who basically still owns every saddle she's ever liked. Also lucky for me, she was willing to loan me a few to try on Zoë. (There is a rather hilarious story about picking them up that involves me mocking her geography skills but karma getting revenge whilst I steered (with no brakes) my motorized toboggan through a mountain pass in a snowstorm, but that's another story for another day.)

She sent me this to-die-for totally gorgeous brown Albion in xtra-super-duper wide, then a slightly wider basic black saddle, then the super wide Roxiecorn saddle.

i really need to get a pic in better light
but then i might never give it back

Three options. Then I can try them all and play with them a bit and at least start to get an idea of what I'm looking for with my baby mare. Makes sense.

Ha ha ha.

First night at the barn, I just reached in the car and grabbed the closest saddle. It was black. I thought it was the less wide one. I set it on Zoëbird.

the problem with the dark is bad pictures

And um.

You guys.

It looked real good.

I threw some fittings on. Lunged her. Sat in it. Really liked it. Puts me in a good place. Fits her really well. Maaaaaaybe needs a thin little half pad, but seemed pretty ok without it.

look! riding media!

I looked under the flap to check which saddle it was.

cough.

well that's real wide

Yeah the Roxie saddle. The uber wide one.

why am i surprised?
i shouldn't be surprised

Of course, the fun thing with babies is that if they're not done growing at 4, they're probably not done growing at 4.5 either.

But.

At least we have a starting point?