Finally, a Well-Fitting Saddle for Your Haflinger

The good-looking, lovable Haflinger is considered by many to be the ideal leisure and family horse: balanced, robust, good-natured, sure-footed on the trail and easy to handle – and, being a small horse, easy for young riders to mount too.

Muscular and compact as he is, however, the cuddly blonde causes problems in one respect: many owners have nearly despaired while searching for a saddle that actually fits their Haflinger. Many off-the-shelf saddles slip on the Haflinger's round back or turn out to be too short or too narrow.
 
Saddles from Iberosattel® were developed specifically for compact horse breeds and can be adapted to the typical Haflinger proportions without any compromise in fit.

We are a family-run saddlery from Freystadt in Bavaria. For over twenty years we have been developing and building saddles for horses with baroque proportions.
 
We came to saddlery through our own horses – we breed Andalusians of the Pura Raza Espanola. At first we rode original Spanish saddles, and their riding comfort, quality and looks won us over completely. Over time, however, these saddles proved impractical in some important details: hardly any German saddler is willing to re-pad a Spanish saddle, for example, and so over the years we had to retire several of our beloved Iberian originals.

We never found comparable saddles for our baroque-proportioned Andalusians from local suppliers – so we ended up simply designing and building our dream saddles ourselves. Inspired by Spanish saddles, but easy to re-pad – and even adjustable in tree width! With practical solutions for many problems: for instance our Amazona Solution against saddle sores or the Secusad System as theft protection.

Haflingers are typical "square" horses: relative to their length, they have a wide back, plus ample shoulders. Off-the-shelf saddles, usually designed for narrower, longer horses, are therefore typically too narrow, too long – or both. This restricts the Haflinger's shoulders and hindquarters and presses on the loin area. The round ribs and the little to non-existent withers also often let the saddle slide around loosely on the Haflinger's round back.

Haflingers share these physical traits (and the saddle problems that come with them) with baroque horses. And that's exactly why an Iberosattel® model can turn out to be the right saddle for a Haflinger! Our models are specifically designed for more compact breeds – and can be made extra short if needed.

Our saddle padding, the patented Comfort Pad, makes much better use of the available bearing surface width than a conventional wedge-panel padding. We especially recommend it for short, compact horses whose saddle area is very limited in length but has plenty of room in width.
 
By widening the bearing surface, the rider's weight can be distributed better even on the back of short horses. This reduces saddle pressure. A wide bearing surface also gives the saddle noticeably better grip – a blessing for "slip-prone" horses like the Haflinger.
 
For the very shortest of the "short ones", our Comfort Pad is also available in a compact version: the Comfort Compact Pad, which can be shortened down to 44 cm.