Saddle Pad Tutorial

I get a lot of questions about saddle pads, so I thought a blog post might be helpful.  I'm quite a tack junkie myself, which is another reason why eventing is the perfect sport for me since I can justify having three sets of tack per horse, one set for each phase of competition.  Since I also ride western I have an elaborate collection of saddle pads.  Pads come in all kinds of colors, shapes, sizes, and materials.  I took photos of a few of the ones I could find (we're still in the midst of a lot of unpacking!)

This first photo is of a few of my western pads.  Each of them has a different purpose, though they are all similar.  When I'm working with a saddle that fits the horse in question, I like wool felt pads because they don't compress too much and seem to distribute heat pretty well. 

The top brown pad is called a cutback pad because it has a hole in the front cut out to accommodate high withers.  The black pad in the middle is about 3/4" thick and square, it works well under a western saddle that fits the horse reasonably well or is a touch wide. 

This white pad is appropriate for a saddle that fits the horse quite precisely and too much padding would make it uncomfortable.  Saddle pads are like socks.  If your shoe is too wide you can sometimes get away with wearing if you have a thick sock, but if your shoe is too narrow a thick sock only makes things worse.  

This floppy pad is called a western saddle blanket, and is only some thin woven cotton.  I use it as a cover for the regular pad at horse shows when I want us to look a little more crisp (I don't want the horse hair that has become stuck to the top of the everyday pad to show).

This square-ish pad is for english saddles, just a schooling pad.  It's a couple layers of cotton with a layer of batting in between.  English saddles are made to fit the horse's back fairly closely, so this pad will absorb sweat and save the saddle leather but not do much to change how the saddle fits.

This puffy pad is very similar to the one above it, it has a more square shape to accommodate a dressage saddle with a longer flap.  It doesn't do much to change the fit of a saddle, either, but it's soft and puffy which my sensitive thoroughbreds like.

This sheepskin pad is cotton on the top and sheepskin on the bottom with rolled edges so everyone can see how soft it is.  More a fashion statement than function with the top side sheepskin.  The underside is sheepskin as well, which has great moisture wicking properties and distributes heat nicely.  It doesn't do much to change how a saddle fits other than being slightly thicker than a regular schooling pad.  It's called a half pad because it's smaller than the schooling pads.

This is a gel pad inside of a cotton slipcover.  It works pretty well as a shock absorber, but if your buns are hitting the saddle hard enough to need shock absorption your money would be better spent on riding lessons.  I mostly just use it when I have a saddle that needs reflocking, or the panels on the underside are losing their "give" and need to be restuffed.  I have one saddle in particular that has a great tree which fits many of the horses with high withers and a big "swoop" to their back.  However, the panels were originally air bladders which have deflated somewhat.  So if the tree fits the horse's back I use this gel pad with that saddle to give the horse a little cushion between him and the tree of the saddle.

This half pad is similar to the black sheepskin pad, but it only has sheepskin on the underside.  It is called a correction pad because it has pockets sewn into the top so that I can add felt shims to make the pad thicker in certain places.  I use this pad a lot when I have horses who come to me for physical therapy or rehabilitation who are very asymmetrical through their back because of old injuries.  Horses who have healed from broken withers also often need this pad shimmed a certain way to be comfortable.

I've not had a lot of luck with western correction pads, because the seams for the pockets go all the way through the felt and make for areas where the horse ends up with edema, or swelling.  Better to have a smooth surface against the horse's back rather than one with seams.