WOW Saddles

The Saddle Research Trust is delighted to announce WOW Saddles will be title sponsors for our upcoming conference SRT2021

Saddles for Welfare and Performance

At WOW saddles we have a passion for saddle fitting to maximise the performance and comfort of the horse. Saddle fitting has been seen as an opaque craft. We want to demystify it, bringing accuracy, science and repeatability into saddle fitting.  Over a 20-year period we have developed and enhanced our designs, method of manufacture and saddle delivery into a system that we can teach anyone to be able to specify a correctly fitting saddle for horse and rider. We only sell our saddles through trained retailers that must attend courses and complete CPDs. In addition to technical support, we have regular updates and forums for the retailers to share ideas and solve problems.

There is still a problem: whilst we can teach our system, we cannot teach someone to have an eye for the way a horse should or could go. Nor can we teach how to assess a horse for its possible problems with a view to helping, improving, and strengthening the horse’s musculature in its ridden work, and how to engage with other equestrian professionals to do so. Saddle fitting is a moving target that requires an almost constant monitoring as the horse strengthens and improves. Additionally, any therapy that a horse receives will loosen and improve muscle tension which directly influences the saddle fit.

Looking to the future we see that saddle fitting and therapy sit comfortably side by side to the extent that one should not be done without the other, and this is our goal in the expansion of our saddle fitting network. Dual-qualified fitter/therapists fully understand the horse/rider interaction and can deliver saddle fitting alongside treatment. Customers get a first-class experience and it clearly demonstrates our longstanding commitment to the welfare of the ridden horse.