Saddle Pad Fit: An Inside Look

At Let’s Rope, our commitment to the community and readership has inspired us to provide practical, comprehensive information. We hope this study inspires you to look into your own pads and how they help or hinder your horse’s performance. In this study, we strived to show how pads of different types and shapes fit your horse. These are simply our observations for you to draw your own conclusions. However, it is quite difficult to see how the pad conforms to your horse’s back without X-ray vision.

Saddle Pad fit is extremely important. Even a custom fit saddle can be ruined if used with a pad that doesn’t fit correctly. This study is to help visualize how different types of pads fit and conform to the horse’s body.

Barium paste being loaded into tubing.

Barium tubing applied to topline of horse and bottom of pad.

How We Did It

In order to take a look at different saddle pad fits, we visited our friends at the Brazos Valley Equine Hospital and used their state-of-the-art X-Ray facility. In order for the topline of the horse and the bottom of the saddle pad to show up on X-Rays, we attached a tube filled with Barium paste to both surfaces. This caused a very visible line to be seen on every scan, and the results are what you see here.

Unfortunately, X-Rays cannot pass through a material as dense as a saddle, so instead, we weighed each pad down with a 50-pound sack offeed. Because of this, the weighted images have the pellets in theframe, seen as the out of focus granules, but we also got a view of eachpad as it fits under weight.

Case Study 1: Non-Contoured Pad

The first pad that we used in the study was a generic non-contoured pad. The X-Ray shows two clear white lines representing the barium filled tubes. Without the weight on the pad there is bridging in-between the horse and the pad.

However, after applying a 50lb weight the pad conformed to the shape of the horses topline with minimal space in-between.

A Side Note on Saddle Pad Selection

Before selecting a pad, it is good to observe the shape of your horse’s back. Although this non-contoured pad takes shape under weight, without the weight it is not a true match to the shape of the horse’s back.

Case Study 2: Stacked Felt Pad and Woven Blanket

In this study we evaluated the somewhat popular combination of a felt contoured pad stacked on top of a woven blanket and used in conjunction. As there is an extra pad, an extra barium tube can be seen on the X-Ray.

In the X-Ray showing the pad weighted down, you can see that the pad is held further away from the horse’s topline. This strategy gives the horse more cushion, but deleverages the horse. We feel the assumption is more pad more comfort, but in reality, the more pad causes a wider setup. This is contrary to our close contact approach. This is a good thing to keep in mind when choosing how to saddle your horse for a particular task.

A Side Note on Saddle Pad Stacking

Saddle pad stacking also causes the saddle pad to flare up at the ends, as seen in this last image. This is especially true for horses with more pronounced withers, which is why we are showing the set up on this particular gelding.

Case Study 3: Contoured One Piece Pad

The final pad we tested was not only contoured, but was also different because it was built completely spineless. The pad still had some bridging, but was not as rigid along the top due to this spineless construction.

Once the weight was applied, simulating a saddle, the barium tubes lined up almost perfectly, which is why you see one singular white line on the X-Ray. Also, unlike some of the other setups, once the weight was applied, the pad still laid against the sides of the horse.

Conclusion

Our goal with this article is to create awareness about what you can and can not see in your saddle pad setup. With the concept of close-contact trees and saddles, we feel it is imperative every pad setup should be close-contact as well. Feel free to draw your own conclusions from our visual clinical study. Let’sRope.com is committed to continuously creating awareness on important topics relating to equine sports. We would like to thank the staff at Brazos Valley Equine Hospital for allowing us to use their facility and Dr. Kurt Heite for helping to guide the study and perform the X-Rays.