Well, Rod rawhided his last tree on July 23rd. Now not only is the orders-in-waiting clip empty, but the working-on-orders clips are all empty as well.

Dusty came to visit us in February to learn to build saddle trees. We knew he was high energy when he wanted to get here so much that he made the plane arrive early and was standing on the edge of the curb waiting for us when we drove up with what should have been lots of time to spare…

You can now purchase our 67 minute video, Western Saddle Fit - The Basics, by going to our new website, westernsaddlefit.com. We also have a 7 minute YouTube video on Western Saddle Fit - The Essentials.  Enjoy!

Daring to walk into a lion’s den here… When discussing “big picture saddle fit”, we have to look at more than just the tree and the saddle. There are other factors that affect the pressures on the horse. (We give a run down on these on our Troubleshooting Saddle Fit page.) One of the main ones that can be touchy to discuss is the effect of the rider. But here goes…

Harry is the first person we trained who was serious about building saddle trees for custom saddle makers. He took our course in September 2014 and, after a few hassles in getting the shop up and running (he lives in California, so maybe that explains a few things…) he is now open and taking orders for trees.

Around about 11:10 am today things in the shop looked pretty much like they may have looked any time in the last quite-a-few years. Rod was rawhiding a tree…

Like we said last November, this has been a long winter of goodbyes, as one by one we have made The Last tree for individual customers, some of whom we have been supplying trees to for twenty years. But now we are getting down to the final few trees, and we are hitting some of The Last times we are doing certain parts of the job.

You can now purchase our 67 minute video, Western Saddle Fit - The Basics, by going to our new website, westernsaddlefit.com. We also have a 7 minute YouTube video on Western Saddle Fit - The Essentials.  Enjoy!

The Story

I saw it again this last week. Another website/video talking about Cranial Nerve 11 and how important it is regarding saddle fit. The story is that there is a triangle behind the shoulder blade, in the center of which is Cranial Nerve 11, also called the Accessory Nerve. If you put pressure on that nerve, there is a “reflexive action” which causes the horse to “become agitated… twitch, pin their ears,” and which makes the horse stop and hollow through the back and the croup, preventing them from going forward. So, how much of this is true? Not much, actually. Let’s look at real anatomy and physiology and try to sort out truth from fiction…

We had a question a few days ago from an old customer. He was wondering if we were still building trees as he knew we were shutting things down. The answer - yes, we are shutting things down and yes, we are still building. The key is the time line. The shop will close at the end of July and we will be finishing out our orders by then. But until then, we are still making trees, so I thought I would show you some of what has been going on in the shop, as I have been sadly remiss in that lately…

So what’s the most important piece of equipment in the shop?  Is it the Big Band Saw, that makes those oh-so-important cuts on the bars?