Sorry to come on here and moan but I needed to get this off my chest.
I have used the same saddle fitter to fit saddles for my 2 pure bred arab mares over the past few years and the saddles that i have brought have been great- ive had no problems really.
So this year when I decided that I would start introducing my 3 year old pb arab/welsh 13.2hh mare to saddles etc and hoped to back her and get her started I would get the same saddle fitter out again. I had already brought a lovely little black English leather pony saddle in excellent condition from Ebay which I thought fitted Lily really well but wanted it to be checked by a professional before i started using it on her etc.
So i called the saddle fitter out and she commented on what a lovely little saddle it was but that it was too wide for Lily (it was a med/wide fit). She measured Lily up as a narrow fit and said that she was a very narrow little pony. Straight away i was shocked as Lily is a proper little round pony and is arab/welsh.
Anyway she said she only had one narrow pony saddle in the van and when she tried it said that it fitted Lily perfectly. To me it didn't look right as the pommel was about 4inches in the air above her withers but when i questionned this she said that it didn't matter.
Looking back I should have just said no to the saddle but i was desperate to get a saddle for Lily that fitted so as not to cause her any back problems when I started backing her etc. But thinking i was doing the right thing by believing a professional i agreed to swapping the saddle that i already had for the one she said fitted.
The saddle that I swapped was worth about £300 and the one that she gave me was priced at £150 but as i just really wanted a saddle to start doing work with Lily i just swapped it rather than trying to sell the one i had.
I then found out i was pregnant and suffered terribly with morning sickness all day for the first 15 weeks of my pregnancy and working full time and so i never ended up doing any work with Lily through the summer.
I moved yards in August to a DIY livery yard where they put the haylage out for you in the field and do all their own field maintenance to make my life easyier while i was pregnant. Then in September when I started to feel better i brought lily in and put her saddle on and by this time she was quite fat as shed been at grass all summer and the saddle looked all wrong. I took her for a walk around the farm and did a little trot and the saddle slipped forward and bocked her shoulder movement. I got the other people at the yard to have a look at it and they all agreed that it didn't fit her at all.
the saddle had been newly stuffed when i brought it and on closer inspection the stuffing is not equal on both sides which makes it sit slighly lop sided- perhaps after use the stuffing would equal out and flatten down a bit...i don't know.
I emailed the saddle fitter very politely explaining my concerns and asked if she would come back out and try some more saddles on Lily because i wasn't happy with the fit of the one she sold me. She replied quite abruptly that my pony was very narrow and that she didn't have anything else in stock that would fit her. She also said that she could have sold the saddle she sold me 5 times since she had last seen me. She did say that she still had my saddle in stock and that she would do a straight swap back for hers if i covered the cost of her call out fee to come to my yard. I emailed back that i would be very happy to swap saddles back.
Since then i have emailed 3 times about arranginmg a time/date to do the swap and she has not once replied.
I am now really angry because i have been trying to sell my mare and can't do any work with her as dont have a saddle and will not sell her with the one that i currently have.
Ive decided to try and sell the saddle on ebay or do a part exchange with another saddler. Im now too far into my pregnancy to do any work with Lily but wanted to send her away to be broken but obviously need a saddle to do that.
Im just cross that she said she would swap saddles back and has then dissapeared off the planet of the earth for the past 2 months!
I know im the idiot for being so naive but i only have basic knowledge on saddles which is why i paid for a professional to come out.
rant over...thanks for reading if you got this far!!!
Oh no sounds like she just wanted to sell you one of hers, I know many saddle fitters are only interested in coming out if they can sell you a saddle more money for them that way, is she a master saddler? if so you could report her to them if not I don't know if there is any regulation body you could complain to? I would have a look on the master saddler website.
If you do get your present saddle sold on ebay or advert it,buy barefoot saddle as i never ever go back treed saddle again as my barefoot fits all my arabs and warmblood mare perfect! as its fits any type of horses so try that?
Rant about saddle fitting!!
Posted - 26 Nov 2010 : 1:47:24 PM
