I’m Ellie and this is my mare Whistle. After a hock injury in the field and 2 months of box rest, we have recently been getting back to work. I had noticed that my saddle began to slip to the right which was causing a raised bump on the left side of my horses’ spine.
I work at Bliss in the marketing team, so Nikki came out to have a look. As a result of her injury, she has muscle loss on the right side of her back which was causing the saddle to slip, which you can see where the flexicurve is lying.
The first video shows before making any changes, the saddle is moving to the right and more noticeably you can see that my hips are dropping to the right.
Nikki decided to flock asymmetrically to compensate for her muscle loss which we then put to the test.
Here you can see minimal movement in the saddle and more stability in my hips, interesting how a slight alteration can have such an impact on not just the horse – but the rider too.
This is a good example of not only the usefulness of flocking, but also the importance of regular saddle checks with your fitter, especially after a change of routine like this one.
Saddle slipping problem solved, happy horse = Happy rider!!
