Researchers found that saddle type did not appear to impact movement in a group of Icelandic horses.This is weird to me because I haven’t met very many Icelandic riders who use treeless saddles, or who think they fit all horses? I’ve only ever used one on one horse, who was clearly much more comfortable in the treeless saddle I was using. And the only real difference between Icelandic saddles and dressage saddles is that they often have a flatter seat (better for riding tölt and pace, dressage saddles tend to have a very deep seat that puts you in a great position for trot and canter but doesn’t let you adjust yourself for other gaits) and they are specially made to fit Icelandic horses (dressage saddles that fit adult riders are often made for larger bodied horses than our Icelandic horses). I haven’t heard this bullshit about the saddle helping shoulder movement - we just don’t put the saddles high up on the withers like you see with jumping saddles, that gives the shoulder a little more room but when I rode dressage on my Irish sport horse his saddle was placed the same way, a bit further back than the jumping saddle. Obviously the fit of the saddle is what allows the horse to move uninhibited, not the style of the saddle. I mean.. Duh. Was this ever not obvious? The whole reason you have vets and saddle fitters and trainers working together in Iceland is to create saddles that FIT THESE HORSES SPECIFICALLY. Comfortably. Not to change their movement lol. Is this study trying to say that Icelanders shouldn’t create special saddles designed to fit their uniquely shaped and sized breed of horse? Because that’s… weird.
So, I showed this study to my boss, to see if he would think the claims the article makes (about the purpose of specially made Icelandic saddles being to somehow enhance the movement of the horse) were as weird and off as I thought they were. He did - that’s not what Icelandic saddles are for, and if people think that’s why we use special saddles, they have been educated VERY poorly. He reminded me that 30 years ago in Iceland, before we had the saddle technology that we have now, there simply weren’t saddles that fit these horses well. In older pictures, you’ll see people with cruppers and front girths and all sorts of tricks to try to keep the saddles in place. We NEEDED to develop saddles to specially fit this horse. That’s why vets and saddle fitters and trainers got together to seriously work on this and create the saddles we use now - which have very flexible trees, and a special kind of foam instead of being flocked with wool which allows them to conform to the horse as it’s body changes. My boss was there, he was involved in the creation of these better saddles - a saddle that the horse could wear on these long rides that would be comfortable, that would fit the rider too and allow the rider to be comfortable and in good position, that wouldn’t pinch or slide around on the horse as its balance changes and shifts for the different gaits.
Remember how many things our horses do (all photos of the same horse, Hrafn frá Efri-Raudalæk):
Extremely collected and raised up in slow tölt ^
And fast tölt ^ Tölt is a suspensionless gait which displays the immense carrying power this horse has, one foot bearing all the horses weight at a time.
Then, we have normal, round, springy dressage canter and trot, which is what dressage saddles are designed for. These gaits demonstrate collection AND suspension, carrying power and push power.
But then..
the horse flattens out like an arrow for the racing gait, flying pace. No collection, all push. The horse’s body and balance changes for these different gaits, which allow them to navigate different terrain in Iceland. In the field today, I watched a young horse trot up a hill, take off in canter, down into pace, and then tölt into the run in shed. It’s amazing to see the flexibility and balance these horses are born with, to perform all these different ways. I notice they only tölted in the study, on a treadmill so I can’t imagine they even rode up into fast tölt. Did they try trotting? Pacing? Canter? Did they see if the dressage saddle moved around on the horse when it switched between gaits? Did they care if the rider was pushed into a position more suited to trotting and had to work extra hard to stay neutral in the tack and out of the horse’s way during tölt and pace because of the dressage saddle’s deep seat placement and knee rolls?
We don’t use Icelandic saddles because we have some weird belief that they enhance our horses movement (our horses don’t NEED enhancement, they’re born with this big movement). We use them because they’ve been painstakingly designed over the past decades specifically for our horses and their needs. Of course you CAN ride in a dressage saddle if you really want to (you will probably need some extra padding to make it fit properly, though) but is that the best thing for your horse 10 years down the road? 15? 20? We often have horses that are sound and happy into their 30’s, that’s a long career - why not give your horse the best chance at having a healthy and comfortable back 20 years down the road? I’m going to continue to recommend that anyone who buys an Icelandic horse also buys an Icelandic saddle that fits their horse, for every day riding. Obviously, when I want to jump my horses, I put my jumping saddle on them - because jumping saddles are designed to comfortably fit a horse when they are JUMPING. But for regular daily riding, training, and competition, I use an Icelandic saddle (and all of my horses do NOT go in the same Icelandic saddle, because my horses are all different).
as an Internet Old my knee-jerk is nowai?! but as a science human I’m so glad we finally have some data on this that we can use to push back against the idiotic notion that forced real name policies will somehow improve the quality of discourse according to people who apparently haven’t heard of farcebook
What matters, it seems, is not so much whether you are commenting anonymously, but whether you are invested in your persona and accountable for its behaviour in that particular forum. There seems to be value in enabling people to speak on forums without their comments being connected, via their real names, to other contexts. The online comment management company Disqus, in a similar vein, found that comments made under conditions of durable pseudonymity were rated by other users as having the highest quality.There is obviously more to online discussion spaces than just their identity rules. But we can at say that calls to end anonymity online by forcing people to reveal their real identities might not have the effects people expect – even if it appears to be the most obvious answer.I have wanted this for years. Tumblr is an excellent example. I say and post things here I don’t really want my boss, family or students seeing, but I care about what I put here and I am invested in my ridiculous user name representing some aspects of myself I find important and want to share.
