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Saddle fitting can be an art. There is a lot to it, but armed with some basic information you can help your horse be comfortable in his work.
First of all, you need to decide the basic width of your horses back. We recommend that you use a 2 foot long flexible piece of wire, such as solder or electrical wire, to make a tracing of your horses' withers. There is a specific place that you must measure. You need to find your horses shoulder blade, and measure at the very edge. If you walk your horse for a few steps to see the rotation, or feel for the heavy bone below the wither, you can easily locate the shoulder blade. See our diagram for the shape and location of the shoulder blade. Bend your wire over the withers, right at the edge of the shoulder blade. Once you have measured the "V" shape over the withers, you can transfer this wire to a piece of paper and trace its' shape. We recommend a template that is available from Thorowgood Saddles, one of our english saddle manufacturing companies. They have a wonderful template that you can lay your wire or tracing on top of, and see very easily if your horse is narrow, medium, wide, or extra-wide. Visit this template by clicking HERE. Although not all manufacturers' saddles will follow this chart's dimensions to a tee, you will be able to get fairly close. You can also measure the rise of the horses withers using the same template, if you think your horses wither clearance may be a problem.
Saddles are made on trees, a frame or base that the rest of the saddle is built around. The tree needs to be at least as wide as the horses back, or wider. The way we like to explain this to people is comparing it to shoes. Assuming you have an average foot size, if we give you a mans size 15 sneaker, and enough pairs of socks, you will be able to pad that sneaker until you can walk and get around a bit, but we would not ask you to run the Boston Marathon in that set up. Saddle trees are the same way. You can go a little big, and pad to make it fit, but much too big is not going to work and narrow is never acceptable to the horse. Horses are such honest creatures. They are basically comfortable or not comfortable, and never complain until they are really uncomfortable. We need to do our best to find a tree that fits the horses back well.
In the saddle world, names and sizes of trees are not really consistent from one manufacturer to another. What some companies call a wide may only be medium by other companies. And there are so many different names for the types of trees, it can get a little confusing. Let's talk English trees for a moment. If we measure between the tree points at the edge of an English tree, we will come up with a dimension measured in centimeters. Narrow is 28 cm, standard is 29 cm, medium is 30 cm, wide is 31 cm, and extra-wide is 32 cm. If your horse is a draft type breed, and measured extra-wide on the template, you will most likely need a 32 cm tree size. Most good English saddles will provide the centimeter measurement for you, but some less expensive saddles will simply use the medium, wide, extra-wide scale. Also, the tree measurement must be provided by the manufacturer, as you can't measure the tree once the saddle is assembled.
Western trees are available in basically two sizes, medium or wide. We refer to these two trees as semi-quarter horse bars, or full quarter horse bars. There are specialty trees for Arabians, gaited horses, drafts, and specialty performance events (like endurance), but the quarter horse trees are the most common. Quarter horses out number all other breeds combined in the USA. Out west, quarter horses were the mount of choice for working ranch hands. Custom saddle makers have been catering their saddles to the working quarter horses for years, and this has strongly influenced the type of saddles offered to the public. The quarter horses of 30 years ago were a very different size and shape than the type of quarter horse we breed for today. They used to be smaller, thinner, and narrower. Basically the same proportions, just smaller. The quarter horse tree built several years back would be very narrow by today's standards, but was called the "Semi Quarter Horse Tree". The semi tree is the medium size. Because our horses are getting taller, heavier, and more broad at the shoulder, the tree too has become wider. We call this larger, wider tree the "Full Quarter Horse Bars." Both trees are the same angle over the wither area, but the bars are spread farther apart to allow the wider back horses to get their back up into the gullet of the saddle better. The full tree is the wide size. Narrow western trees are very hard to come by, and are rarely offered except by custom manufacturers.
While we are on the subject of western trees, lets' talk about the material the trees are made from. For years, saddles were hand-crafted. So we often had trees carved from wood, and wrapped with rawhide to seal them from the elements. In this day and age, we "mass produce" saddles to make them efficiently and with less expense. Plus, the materials we have available for manufacturing all goods have widely increased. Many saddles that are under $1000 will have a plastic saddle tree, often made by the Ralide Company. Although wood trees are long considered "the best", they are hand crafted, and every tree is a slightly different size and shape. Good quality wood trees are very expensive, but are an art-form and are typically stronger than their plastic counterpart. Inexpensive wood trees from Mexico or overseas often have twists, warps, inconsistencies in the way they fit horses plus they are very brittle. Plastic saddle trees are perfect every time they come out of a mold, and fairly inexpensive to produce. With molded trees, human craftsmanship no longer makes the difference in how the trees are fitting. The shape of the mold is the shape of the tree, so two saddles with the same tree will fit the horse identical. Plastic trees are a wonderful option for inexpensive trail and pleasure saddles. For those of you into performance, and higher quality saddles, wood trees might be the way to go for you. Either choice will be acceptable to your horse provided the tree fits his back well.
Once you have determined your horses back size, you can correlate that to a tree size. When you have your tree size, you are ready to start shopping for saddles. Find a reputable dealer that will let you test the saddles, and help you fit both you and your horse well. Make sure you have the opportunity to test ride a saddle to make sure your equine partner is comfortable with the setup you have selected for him. Your horse is a different size when he is moving, so you can't really test the fit until the horse has a rider on board and is moving forward. We recommend you buy a saddle for the intended purpose first. If you are going to rope, buy a roping saddle designed for that. If you are going to trail ride, get a trail saddle. If you are going to be trail riding and you buy a roping saddle, you just purchased a bulldozer to do the job of an economy car. Get a saddle designed for what you are going to do. It will just work better. Second, buy to fit the horse. Third, and least important, fit the rider. If you follow this order, you will have a better chance keeping your horse happy and willing. This is a small sliver of saddle fitting info, but it should be enough to get you started on the process. Good luck in your saddle shopping adventure!
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