Frustrations

 Well poo. Today was a frustrating day. 

Life got away from me but I managed to take Lyric to Ashland to ride with Kelli. Unfortunately I suspected that she was still lame when I went to fetch her from the pasture. I tossed her in the roundpen to check and... she just bounced. Ha ha. Not helpful Lyric! I did see a bit of trot which looked okay... and regardless, Kelli and I needed to check out our saddles. 

 

 

So.... We both ordered dressage saddles from the same company at the same time. The saddle fitter sent in our orders. I got a brown one and Kelli got a black one. And we got them and rode in them. And they were fine-ish. Kelli's was really not quite right but she kept messing with it to try to fix it. Mine felt awfully wide and was sitting a little low but in the beginning Lyric felt okay in it. But looking back.... (I'll have to check my blogs!) I feel like she's been a little mincy and short strided recently and it seems like it correlated with the saddle arrival. Although that's also when we started the pour in pads up front too. Anyways, Kelli was looking at my saddle and tried it on Marvin and it fit him quite beautifully. So the plan was to put Kelli's saddle on Lyric and see if it was possible that somehow her saddle got my tree and my saddle got her tree. So even if Lyric was lame, I wanted to bring her anyways. 

I got there and was hoping to get tacked up earlier and get a little bit of a ride in first in my saddle to see if Lyric was sound or not since Patrick had pulled her pour in pads. But I got confused and got there basically only 15 minutes before Kelli. So I had almost finished tacking up when she arrived. We decided that she would come out and watch me and we would get video and then put her saddle on Lyric and she would video me and then we would let Lyric sit and do the same with Marvin. So I got on and rode. I didn't warm her up like I normally would, but... regardless, she was lame. Pretty freakin' lame on the right front. Especially when making smaller right circles. Sigh. Okay... we got the videos we needed. And Kelli had helped me with saddle placement and girth stuff because I was getting frustrated that the girth seemed to be pulling into her elbows. We ended up putting my saddle farther back to get it off her shoulders... ie, I put the tree point behind her scapula. And... it was awful to ride in. I was literally so downhill that I was sliding onto my pommel. I felt like with each post I was going to slide farther up her neck and end up in front of my saddle. And my leg was practically in front of the flap. 

So we went back to the trailer and put Kellis' saddle on her and.. it kind of looked like a perfect fit! It definitely looked more appropriate for a TB back than a spanish back and it looked like it fit her so much better than it fit Marvin. By far! And it even looked like it fit her better than her saddle. Hmmm.... So I got on and she immediately felt better. I felt better! Even with it being a 16.5" seat. My leg was where it was supposed to be on the flap.. I was able to sit in the saddle and not on the pommel. I was balanced. And Lyric was walking with more reach and had stopped bracing and inverting a bit. She started to swing a little more. But she was still lame. Sigh... I wanted to cry. I rode for a little bit longer to see if she would work out of it but no. But we got the video we needed. 

So then we swapped to Marvin and long story short.... Marvin was miserable in Kelli's saddle as was Kelli and Marvin was much happier in Lyrics saddle. It fit him so much better. So... we don't think Kelli was crazy. We really do think they somehow swapped the trees!

Fast forward to Wednesday and... Kelli isn't crazy! We were able to send all the videos and photos to the saddle fitter... who ended up calling the company. As she was (brilliantly) asking the company owner how to go about making us happy, the owner made the comment that the brown saddle was the WXW baroque tree and the black saddle was the MW a frame tree. Um.... nope.. that's backwards! She realized she had somehow transposed the orders and messed them up. So then she told our fitter that she would let us ship them back, she would fix them (and put them at the front of the line) and send them back to us before Christmas. And she also threw in a new girth and new stirrups for us. YAY!!!!! So... we'll get the correct saddles (albeit a few months later... and after stressing ourselves and ponies) by christmas! 

However, I'm still concerned about Lyrics lameness. I still don't know if it's because of the saddle creating compensatory patterns which caused some sole bruising.... or if it's from the pour in pads... or if it's entirely unrelated and she has a torn collateral ligament or something. Sigh.... I'm so sad. Especially because in the meantime, Kelli and I had swapped saddles so she could ride in mine and I could ride in hers and I was hoping to get some rides in to see if she felt better. But I won't if she's still lame.