I am having saddle drama. Again. And only a week left to sort it out before I am going to be out of the saddle for a very long while recovering from surgery, and have to leave a saddle at the barn for my trainer to use (jump saddle is currently out of commission).
I currently have two saddles, both of which have gotten the thumbs up from my saddle fitter. One is the perpetually-smells-like-bacon County that I bought earlier this year (early spring I think?). It’s an 18 inch seat, WXW tree that my fitter had to flock a little heavy to accommodate that Sydney has lost some weight this year. Not enough for the vet to care, but enough that the jump saddle is out of commission for now.
The second saddle is a Bates Innova Mono flap that I picked up on eBay a couple of weeks ago for a smoking hot price. I have owned a few Bates over the years because the seat style fits me really well, and the sizing tends to be really generous. Their Size 2 that they say is for 17.5 - 18 inch riders, measures just shy of a 19 inch seat. It fits me really well.
The pros to the County are that Sydney moves well in, does all the things. The cons are the seat is very small for me (I really truly need an 18.5), and I have to think really, really hard to keep my right leg behind the block. I made a post about this a few weeks ago about how some of this is just bad habit, but I honestly think that some of this might just be how I am made and how Sydney is made/has conformed herself to me at this point.
The pros to the Bates are that it fits me really well. Sydney does all of the things, moves well in it….except at the canter…I think. The verdict is out on that. Because of the weather, her health, etc I have been having a really hard time coming to a conclusion on if she is being weird at the canter because of the saddle, or if she is being weird at the canter because she is just being weird at the canter. She hasn’t shown any signs of soreness after being ridden in this saddle, and the only problems are when I ask her to do smaller than a 15m circle. The other problem is that the saddle has CAIR panels, and in video I saw of myself in the saddle I didn’t love how much I felt I was bouncing in the saddle while sitting the trot. It wasn’t a cute look. My fitter has offered to swap the CAIR panels out for wool, so that could be rectified at some point in the future. I will say the CAIR panels do seem to help my back pain, as well as being in a bigger seat size overall. 
I have been so confused about this I have been literally swapping saddles back and forth almost daily trying to figure out what the heck to keep and what the heck to sell, because one of them has got to go. Right now I have them both listed for sale with the thought process of oh well, whichever sells first I guess will tell me which one I am going to keep? The canter thing in the Bates is really puzzling to me. Yesterday I cantered her in the County and she honestly wasn’t much better, but we were also in the indoor, and the first couple of rides in the indoor can be a lot of “you want me to what?! NO! We only canter in the giant outdoor! You can’t possibly expect me to canter in this tiny space!” Even though my horse can and does canter 10m circles as part of our dressage tests, and we do school that size in the outdoor arena. Something about the first couple of weeks in the indoor just kind of seems to throw some of the horses for a claustrophobic loop. 
So anyway, I am really starting to feel the pressure now to make a decision on which one is going to be our saddle and which one I sell. I feel like I should sell the County simply because the seat size isn’t a great fit for me, but then I am not sure about the bouncing I saw on video in the Bates and if the canter issues are directly related to the saddle or if it’s just related to everything else going on this time a year for her (which she has def been on a roller coaster right now). Ugh. Sometimes I wish I was still a kid with a parental unit making all the decisions for me.
