Secrets and Saddlers

A good saddler, repairing stitching and straps, can tell what kind of a rider has been using the saddle.  I've just noticed that my stirrup leathers need re-setting due to worn out stitching at the buckles and, just for curiosity, held up the pair of leathers side by side ...

And noticed that the left one is about three quarters of an inch longer than the left.  Which means:

a) I obviously don't clean my tack very often or I'd have picked it up sooner

b) I should be changing the leathers left to right whenever I do clean them

c) I've been sitting slightly unevenly for about 4 months

Which might tell the saddler:

a) she's a lazy sod

b) she never notices anything

c) her horse is a saint

The scuffing at the pommel and on the fronts of the flaps and on the tip of the cantle (go google) tells us both that I've been a little cavalier (pardon the pun) about how I've set my saddle down - it's been allowed to rest on the ground against a tree.

The angled buckle marks on the stretching rawhide girthstraps announce that I've been using the same girth for a long time and the horse's weight hasn't changed much - although there are variations on that theme which might give away the fact that I deliberately move the buckles around the straps so as not to wear out any one set of holes.

The neat repairs to the seat and the flaps prove that I have visited the saddler before, to get things mended before they really went wrong.  The supple leather of the underneath proves that I  clean the saddle more often than the stirrups and keep it in a leather-friendly environment despite how I plonk it down before riding. The lighter-coloured areas of leather towards the back of the flaps mean that I've got short legs which spend more time in contact with leather than Hoss's sides.

We're lucky around here to have a lovely saddlery repair centre where they seem to be able to mend just about anything leather and what they can't mend they can replace.  They're known to some of their customers as The Leather Ladies, which sounds kind of kinky but their workshop is called, unassumingly, The Leather Workshop and since Liz and Linda are female I hope they don't mind the title.  When they mended worn out stitching on my 'half-chaps' recently, Liz handed them back to me and remarked succinctly: 'Keep your lower leg still.'  

So I know what she's going to say about my uneven stirrup leathers and I'm wondering whether I should take them in one at a time so that they can't be compared!