Saddling Placement on Your Horse

all right beautiful morning here on apollos uh going to make another video this morning going to make a video on saddling your horse so i've got big boon here and i guarantee what's going to happen in this video is boone is just going to lip and fuzzle everything this is one of the most alert horses this is not a standing there sleepy-eyed go to sleep horse so he's uh he's going to be like making a video with a four-year-old in the background but that's okay my wife assures me it makes things interesting so we're going to do a video a short video on saddling your horse now i know you've probably been saddling your horse for years you know how to solder your horse but proverbs 27 17 says iron sharpened iron and if you stop learning in the horse wood if i stop learning i just was gonna sit on the couch and uh and start playing cards um i learn all the time and so we can learn from each other so if you learn just one little tidbit from this from me and i keep learning from somebody else then the horse community uh keeps getting stronger and keeps growing and i've worked for places where we got up over morning fed the horses ate breakfast went out and saddled 40 horses and got it done in an hour um so i've saddled a lot of horses so maybe there might be one little something here that help you all right so let's start with saddle fit now i don't mean does your saddle fit your horse we're going to begin from the place assuming that your saddle does fit your horse before you go to put the saddle on horse do you know where the saddle is supposed to go now i've got a saddle tree here um for those of you that that know building saddles i called timberline saddle tree had this one custom built for me i'm gonna try to find somebody to build me a saddle on this tree one day but your standard western saddle this is what's underneath this is what it's built on okay see that yeah don't look at that urethane don't taste good okay this is a saddle tree so if you look here the horse's scapula comes up in here and it's bone all right so if you feel that that's bone bone bone and then there's a dip there right there that's the end of a shoulder blade his scapula your saddle is not supposed to be up on here this moves when he walks and he needs to be free to move your saddle is supposed to fit back in here all right so with the naked tree on here you can see how this sits down in this pocket that is the natural place it's supposed to sit all right so now we're going to take this off and we're going to saddle the horse with that understanding duane how can you tell from your saddle yes you can now we're going to put the blanket on i use come here puzzle monster i use a standard just 100 percent wool blanket three quarter inches thick and that's all i use okay i'll just take a moment here everything on my horse is pretty much everything is natural i don't use nylon i don't use plastic i don't use biothane i don't i don't like hospital shearling i use wool and leather predominantly mostly i've ridden horses i wrote a outfit one time i put over 600 miles on a horse in the month of june one horse 600 mile she never got the tiniest little saddle source she never lost a pound she packed on muscle i fed her good i used the best gear the best gear is not the most expensive gear this is actually diamond wool and you can buy them in the right place for 50 60 bucks you don't need to spend 300 on a saddle blanket and a saddle pad you don't need gel and gooey stuff and all this hospital shearling which holds bugs and heat and everything it's just just wool is fine okay so i use a wool saddle blanket put that on my horse well now he's drinking my coffee you or something else big man all right now he stands so the saddle comes around now we're mostly concerned about that'll fit here okay when you go to put your saddle on your horse don't slam it get you a little momentum get your saddle up there get it on make sure it's square all right pull the pad up in the goalie now here's what we're talking about every western saddle i know of has a concho of some sort right here in the front okay that concho should we show over here that concho is screwed in about right there on your saddle okay so if this concho if you feel that shoulder blade where that shoulder blade stops and you feel that pocket if you push your saddle back so that concho is over that pocket then your saddle is where it needs to be that's the sweet spot okay if you're constantly go out and your saddle is always shifting back or it's always shifting forward and it's always trying to find that sweet spot it's going to look for that spot okay it wants to find that spot so get make sure you're not on your horse's shoulders make sure your concho's down in that pocket so your saddle's fitting horse okay all right get my stirrup by the way i'm gonna step around here and drop my scent which by the way speaking of cinch is talking about all natural i use mohair sensors um they last longer they don't sore horses up as bad they're softer they're better okay now proper saddle in your horse does not begin when you saddle your horse proper saddling of your horse begins when you unsettled the last time if you unsettled your horse and you left your latigo dragging and hanging or you took it and flipped it over over your seat you're not set up right okay every time i unsettle this is how i do this all right so then i can come in here especially if i'm working a colt i'm going to have to let that down because i wrote ej last and she's about half this horse's side but every time i unsaddle i put my horse away the exact same way and then when i'm ready to saddle the next time it's ready and then if i've got a colt that's just a little cold back and he decides to cut some dido's on me yeah i'm ready so this is still hanging here from where i unsettled last time reach under here and get my scent tuck it through i still haven't done anything pull it out now my horse jumps i have control okay i'll show you that again and the way you set that up is you come in here and you come backwards and you come up through that backwards just like that okay and then when you need it it's right there you're not fuzzling and fussing with it so you come back in backwards do you approve huh like that and then if you want you can do one of these to hold it so it doesn't come undone depending on how stiff your latigo is and when you're ready this out of your horse it's right there all right never leave your cinch drag in the ground don't leave your lat a gold drag in the ground all right it's unprofessional it's sloppy it's lazy but just don't do it all right come in here now i'm gonna cinch him up in threes but i'm gonna go ahead and tighten this here's something else all right i learned this after years you do what you want okay i've said it before i'll say it a thousand times you've got to do you but this is how i tie my let it go all right i come in here now just about everybody ties a lot of gold they come to this point right here now the odds are if you don't buckle you'll come around come up and back through like a man's tie but then when you do that what you have is you've got a big knot under your knee depending on where your rigging is you don't have to do all that if you'll come back through right here pop that in right there it's not going anywhere it's not coming off it's not thick it's not a waste it's not under your leg it's right there okay now a couple other things sharp-eyed folks are going to notice that are missing on my saddle that you're like you got to have that i don't have a breast collar on my saddle i'm not anti-breast collar i own two or three breast collars but what i am is i'm anti-unnecessary now where i'm living right now what i'm riding what i'm doing i don't need a breast collar if you're going to have something on your saddle if you're going to have something on your saddle know what it's there for know the purpose of it okay a breast collar is on the saddle to keep the saddle from sliding back in super high steep hills if you've got a horse that isn't has doesn't have good confirmation or also to keep it from sliding back if you're roping steers and they're going to be hitting all right i don't need one and i just don't like all the puzzle and the weight and everything and the rubbing on my horse and carrying on uh so when i need one i put it on when i don't i don't the other thing you'll notice is i don't have a back cinch on here now you'll see in some of my videos sometimes i do sometimes i don't but generally i don't uh people say oh you've got to have a back cinch well the people who say that often don't even know what the back cinch is for saddles originally didn't have backs inches and as they started moving the rigging forward on the saddle and then you rope a steer you rope something and the back of the saddle comes up well number one i'm not roping anything number two this is a wade saddle and my rigging is one full leather piece that ties in the entire saddle so when i cinch this saddle down it pulls the entire saddle down this back isn't coming up okay so i've seen too many wrecks of people who put the bat cinch on you gotta have back cinch they don't know why it's for they don't know how to tighten it if you're gonna have a back cinch come up against a horse's belly it's just something else for a stick if you're going through the woods a tree branch to go through if it's hanging down a horse is going down a steep hill they're putting their feet up underneath them they'll get their hooves hung up in there uh if you're trying to cue a horse and you're doing soft cues and stuff your legs and your spurs hit it and it gets in the way if you need it have it if you don't need it don't have it make life simple okay so this is how i settle my horse it's just straight and simple if i'm in the mountains and i need a breast collar fine if i have a saddle and for whatever reason i need a back cinch fine but if i don't i have what i need okay so just make sure you have a good saddle that fits you that fits your horse put it on right and go have fun

Channel: Dry Creek Wrangler School

Views: 28,931

Rating: 4.9653544 out of 5

Keywords: horse, horse training, saddle your horse, saddle fit, saddle placement, breast collar, back cinch, saddle pad

Id: zkCiFI8GwB4

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020