Ferriana Saddle Testing

Ferriana is going well under saddle now.  The routine is still for her to learn something new, think on it all night, and have it mastered by the next day's ride.  Happily, she is LOVING jumping with me aboard.  She's very sensitive and reactive, with phenomenal brakes when I exhale loudly, but she's figuring out the spectrum of slowing down.  A loud exhale means halt immediately, a breath with less air moving through means slow down and rebalance (a "half-halt").

Because she uses her back so well over fences, it's crucial that I have a saddle that fits her just right so that she never has any pain when jumping.  I currently have one on trial that I've been riding in all week, and so far so good.  My personal standard for "perfect saddle" is that I forget it's there while I'm riding and don't notice it at all.  This one doesn't entirely escape my notice, but it's significantly better each time I've ridden in it this week.  It's also new, so needed some breaking in.

We've had a few short jumping sessions, and today a friend got some video for me so I could assess how I rode in the saddle and how the horse went.  From that video I got awesome still photos of Ferriana's jumping form, which is just as nice under saddle as when she's free jumping.  It's also great to hop off her at the end of a ride, and she follows me around asking to have her ears scratched while I set fences for whoever I'm coaching when I'm done with her.  Who knew she'd turn out to be such an affectionate horse?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP6w6jublhQ