We had bit drama this year with the whole USDF baucher thing, but we also had girth drama this year, ugh.
It started early this year when I FINALLY got my hands on a County dressage saddle that fits both Sydney and I perfectly. The problem was that my girth from my previous County was oddly too long. Granted, the old County was on a WXW tree and Sydney really only needs a W tree, so I don’t know if that was the difference, or if it was the fact that the old County was a 2009 and this County is/was a 2021 that was being passed around as a demo. Anyway, long story short, I bought a new girth. I treated myself to a girth I had been wanting for a while, a Lemieux Gel-Tek, which is modeled after the ProLite and Fairfax girths (LeMieux is actually rather notorious for knocking off famous brands for cheaper). I had had one in brown for my string of ill fated and ill fitting brown dressage saddles, and had really liked it. This one, however, appeared to be a dud. Every time I used it, it dyed Sydney black. I reached out to the company and they told me to just condition it, and that it would eventually stop. Well, I didn’t want to wait for to eventually stop, not when it was leaching who knows what kind of chemicals on to my horse’s skin on an almost daily basis, and she already has a type of cancer and a couple of sarcoids to boot.
I bought a Professional Choice Ventech girth, but this time with fleece, I say this time with fleece because the girth I used for my old County was the exact same girth, just a 32 inch, and with neoprene. Something about it being shorter just made it not sit right on her though, but I held on to it because I knew in my head that we had been using this brand and style of YEARS without issue. We will come back to this thought in a minute.
Next up on the try list was a WOW brand H-girth. I did some pretty extensive research about these girths, and how they were well suited to horses with Sydney’s conformation: big belly, forward girth groove, saddle needs to be kept back despite gravity saying it should go forward. The only thing I kept seeing was that these girths were more meant for the WOW saddles, which all come equipped with a point billet, which I mean, makes sense considering they are made by WOW. My saddle does not have a point billet, both billets come straight down off the tree, which works much better for Sydney because the saddle isn’t being pulled forward into her shoulder. One of the other riders at the barn has one of these girths, so I got to try it for a couple of rides, and then further internet sleuthing assured me that there are people that use them on saddles without a point billet.
Did it work? Sorta… Was it ideal? Not really. The straps kind of angled back towards each other because of how my billets are. Even though WOW says these can be used on saddles without a point billet, the spacing makes it really hard. We used this most of the summer until I started to notice that she was getting some rubs between the straps as her winter coat was coming in. This to me indicated that she was likely getting rubbed all the time, it was just now her coat was long enough to make it obvious.
So, I swapped her to the Professional Choice Ventech girth, and she promptly got a girth gall. I was MORTIFIED. I have never felt so horrible. Thankfully, I wasn’t on some 5 hour long trail ride, or anything like that. She got a week off for it to heal, then swapped back to the WOW girth while trainer and I pondered what to do. We didn’t really come up with any solutions other than to keep riding in the WOW girth for the time being while I scoured the internet for information.
This past week the saddle fitter came out, and I grilled her for solutions. Side note, OMG did getting my saddle flocked make a huge difference. I could feel it sitting differently with more wool in there. I wish I had been a little more insistent on her coming out sooner. I can also now toss the fluffy half pad and go back to my ProLite half pad, which feels so much nicer under my butt.
Fitters suggestion was the Total Saddle Fit StretchTec girth. It’s an interesting design, meant to be anatomical as well as move with the horse as their body expands and contracts during different points of a ride. I didn’t really want to spend full price on yet ANOTHER girth this year (are we keeping count?), but thankfully there are a ton of these available used (which may or may not be concerning), it was just a matter of finding the right size and color at a price I was willing to pay. This ended up giving me my first experience with buying from the TackTack app. Everything went smoothly, and I ended up with a basically new girth for a song.
I had my first ride in it today, and so far it seems to tick all of the boxes. No rubs, allows the billets to hang straight down, and fits her well. Time will tell if this ends up being our ultimate winner. I am crossing my fingers because I have no idea where I would go next.
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