On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 08:23:47PM -0500, Karen Thomas wrote: > I don't really care if > people use the free-swing option or the hard-use option with their > Sensations - that's their choice.
and i think it should be a choice informed by the designer of the saddle and reports of other users. > But, when a 100-ish-pound rider starts > complaining about that flimsy butterfly plate after only a couple of months, > I have to ask questions. The questions I ask are: what saddles were used on > the horse in his prior life, and how much pressure is the rider putting into > their stirrups? i've always ridden stjarni in a hrimnir x-wide treed saddle, aside from the sensations. i ride him bareback as well, and without stirrups with a saddle. i can't possibly be putting more than fifty-five pounds or so of pressure per stirrup, even if i were standing on my toes, which of course i'm not. i imagine i could jump up and down to exert more force, but in fact i have not done that either. as i mentioned earlier, his previous owner was a little girl, and presumably even lighter than i am. i do not know what saddle she used, but it was at least two years between her riding and stjarni's white hairs showing up. i think it would be quite the coincidence for the white hairs to match the butterfly-plate shape so well if there were a years-old injury involved instead. > He's been riding in a Sensation for almost two years and he > typically rides 2-3 hours, sometimes less, sometimes more. That's a lot of > weight, and he's been doing it in that saddle for over a year and a half. how often does he ride? in the summer, stjarni will get ridden for that long more days than not. (my students have thinned out since the snows hit, to which i can only say both "sillies, get icelandic riding suits" and "yay, more free time for me!" :) stjarni also, i should mention, shows white hairs rapidly after injury (he sustains bites and kicks quite often, since he deposed the former alpha in his paddock and the former alpha doesn't like it) unless they are treated fairly aggressively. he has a patch on one flank that i can't imagine how he got, but it's quite distinct and has been there for over a year. (i haven't tried treating that; it doesn't seem to bother him.) skjoni may have less graphic skin than stjarni does. > My point is simply that the stirrup > rigging isn't so much of a factor if the rider doesn't jam all their weight > in their stirrups. That's not a good habit to have in any saddle, treed or > not. are you suggesting i do that? i doubt we'd be winning two-phases (in the sensation, yet) if i were, nor has anyone said as much any time i've posted pictures of myself or my students to the list or other equestrian communities. --vicka ps. as we say in the statistical-analysis world, "anecdote is not the singular form of 'data'". i do presume that the sensation's designers have, in the course of their ongoing engineering and revisioning of their saddle design, collected and examined enough information to be dignified with the term 'data', though.
