Whether you visit our premises, or we come to you, the process is the same however if you come to us, we’ll spend time getting your horse settled in our indoor stables and put the kettle on before we talk about your current saddle situation.
If you’ve not had an appointment with us before, you’ll have filled in our initial fitting form that gives us basic information such as your horses’ details, injuries or illnesses, workload, your current saddle etc.
We’ll then have a discussion with you, the rider, to find out more and understand if there are any current problems and find out what your expectations are.
Once we’ve got all the information we need, we’ll move on to assessing your horse statically. This involves a physical examination, feeling muscle tone, and lumps and bumps – and we’ll make notes as we go along. We will take templates of your horse’s shape at every visit, to create an on-going record.
You will then walk and trot your horse up in hand, so that we can see the way they move without a saddle or rider.
Following this, we’ll spend time examining your saddle, do basic safety checks – for example tree soundness, girth strap safety etc – and look at the panel to assess the flocking.
The saddle is then put on your horse, and we look at the basic fit. If we think it’s suitable, or the saddle has been seen by us before, we may then do any flocking alterations (sometimes this is done after the horse has been ridden, as the horse under saddle is a completely different shape to a static horse).
We always ask you to ride the horse unless there’s a good reason not to do this such as an unbacked horse, or you are injured. We will never ask you to do something that you or your horse aren’t capable of, for example if you never canter in the school, we wouldn’t expect you to do that for us. Our top priority is for you and your horse to be safe and comfortable.
