Simply the Right Saddle - For You and Your Friesian

It is clever and beautiful, powerful and elegant at the same time. It moves with great ground cover, full of impulsion. Its talent for classical dressage makes it the ideal partner for riders with high expectations. Yet it is anything but a temperamental diva: it is a good-natured, people-oriented family horse.

So there is nothing to complain about when it comes to the Friesian. However, when it comes to buying a saddle, many a Friesian has given its owner a headache. Why is that? As a Baroque horse, this breed differs considerably from the horse type that dominates equestrian sport today. Not every manufacturer has the short, but extra-broad, widely angled saddle a Friesian needs in their range.
 
Iberosattel® does: we're experts in the Baroque horse type. And our saddles grow with your horse. Every one of our saddle models is individually fitted in gullet width and padding, and can be readjusted as your horse changes later on.

The typical Friesian has a flat but broad wither that reaches far into the back, long, muscular shoulders and a broad but fairly short back. Its ground-covering gaits translate into an equally impressive rotation of the shoulder, and the hindquarters' activity also reaches well into the back.
 
Saddles designed for narrower horses sit on many a Friesian back like a party hat. But even when the saddle fits better, a number of typical fit problems occur that are also related to the Friesian's Baroque conformation:

• The saddle gullet is too narrow.
• The saddle doesn't offer enough shoulder freedom.
• The saddle is too long, presses in the lumbar region and doesn't let the back swing freely.
• The spinal channel is too narrow, which also restricts the spine's free flexion.
• The saddle doesn't lie well along its whole length, because it's too narrow and too steeply angled.
• The saddle slips.
• The saddle doesn't make good use of the available bearing surface in width, which a) looks visually unattractive and b) unnecessarily increases saddle pressure.

A saddle that presses or restricts freedom of movement causes the horse pain. This is often barely noticeable from the outside, and it's a matter of individual character how your horse reacts to it, whether it suffers in silence and tries to avoid the pain by moving with a tense stride or a locked back, or whether it alerts you by bucking or kicking that something is wrong. Both reactions give the rider, in principle, a chance to recognise the problem, but unfortunately these symptoms often aren't recognised as signs of discomfort at all, or other supposed causes are blamed instead.
 
The consequences for the horse can rightly be called tragic: pressure points can develop into chronic inflammation and muscle atrophy, poor posture into tension, joint and cartilage wear. In a horse's musculoskeletal system, almost everything is connected to everything else, so the resulting conditions are correspondingly complex.

We are a Bavarian saddle manufactory dedicated to developing saddles for horse breeds that don't fit the widespread English sport-horse type. They're described as square-built horses: breeds with a back that is short, and usually fairly broad too, in relation to their other proportions.

Such breeds come in all sizes: ponies and small horses such as Icelandic horses or Haflingers, typical Baroque horses such as the Lusitano or the Friesian itself, but also draft horses belong to this group. The numerous problems these horses have with standard off-the-shelf saddles can almost always be traced back to a common denominator: the saddle is too narrow if it fits in length, and too long if it's wide enough.

As an alternative to the usual wedge-shaped panels, which often restrict movement in Friesians too, we've developed our own saddle padding: the Comfort Pad, which most of our Baroque saddles as well as some dressage saddles are fitted with. It is especially broad and thus offers considerably more bearing area compared to standard saddle padding. This distributes the rider's weight over a larger back area, and reduces saddle pressure. Especially for horses like the Friesian, with a saddle position that's limited in length but broad, this is a very sensible solution to make the saddle not only fit but also back-friendly and comfortable. We've reduced the thickness of the Comfort Pad compared to other padding, and reduced it further still in the leg area, to allow especially good contact with the horse.
 
For very short horses, there's our Comfort Compact Pad: just as broad as the Comfort Pad, but even more compact and can be shortened down to 44 cm. This lets us make even very short saddles optimally back-friendly.
 
For horses with a lot of movement that need a bit more room in the wither area, we recommend our EWF saddle tree with extra wither freedom. Here we've integrated the head plate, encased in plastic, into the saddle tree, so that impacts between saddle and wither never come into contact with the hard metal.
 
And because the best saddle is no good if it's not also comfortable for the rider to sit in, all our saddles have a full-length saddle flap and the Amazona solution: a padded recess in the saddle tree that prevents saddle sores.

• The gullet width of our saddles can be changed by adjusting or exchanging the head plate.
• The saddles of our premium line have a saddle tree that can also be individually adjusted in other aspects of fit.
• The Comfort Pad is matched to your horse in length, curve and spinal channel width. 

• A number of Iberosattel® models can be adjusted up to gullet width 39 or even beyond.
• The rider's weight is well distributed thanks to the large bearing surface.
• The saddles are cut short, making them perfect for Friesians.
• Even on a broad back, they don't slip.
• An Iberosattel® offers freedom for the loin area.
• The shoulder is free from the rider's weight and can work unhindered.
• The Amazona solution provides maximum seating comfort even at the most powerful trot.
• The saddles are individually fitted and can also be readjusted later on. 
• The Ibero models Vaquero Breitschaft and Ibero Amazona Comfort, for example, are available up to at least gullet width 39.