hi folks welcome to another stall13.com video hopefully you saw a video about grooming your horse before you put a saddle on if you didn't you'll see it it's in the same category as this one okay what we're going to do is show you a nice safe way to saddle a horse because a lot of people don't know that we're going to go ahead we're going to put a pad on now i have shown you there is a video that shows a difference between a saddle pad and a saddle blanket you may want to watch that we've got the pad in place the horse has been groomed next what we're going to do is get the saddle now when you're putting a saddle on you've got stirrups you've got latigo you've got front cinches back cinches go ahead and put your saddle on when you put a saddle on a horse ladies and gentlemen you really don't want to just throw it down like you're putting a pillow back on the living room couch notice how she gently lifted and sat this saddle on the horse if this is a synthetic saddle i'll grant you that but if you have to literally vault and slam your saddle onto the horse you may want to think about either a shorter horse or a lighter saddle kind of in the way here she's organizing her cinch her belly cinch she's also getting all of her rest of her rigging in place when you put a saddle on a horse you always want to make sure that you have a sufficient amount of pad in the front now there's i like to call them cheaters i love them they're great shortcuts and they keep people from making mistakes this particular i know it's hard i'm so sorry she's trying to saddle her horse and i'm like so in the way a lot of blankets and pads actually have a little bit of leather here that kind of uses as a benchmark that you're supposed to have the front of your saddle otherwise known as the pummel now what she's doing is kind of just stand to the side a little bit no come over here by me so they can see that what she's doing now i'll hold that up for you what she's doing now is is she is putting the cinch getting ready to suck up the cinch now there's one thing that i want to talk about when cinching a horse ladies and gentlemen and that is and it's true i don't care if it's a relative i don't care if it's your best friend or the best person you've ever known there is never any reason to take your knee or a fist and to punch or knee a horse because you're trying to get them to exhale so that you can get that saddle tight there's no reason to sit there and use all your strength to jerk on this strap to tighten this sense you can literally get a saddle so tight it's uncomfortable you can get a saddle so tight that the horse can't breathe properly you want to make sure that your saddle is tight excuse me for a second so that when you take both of your hands and you use quite a bit of force that notice this whole horse is rocking but the saddle isn't moving the whole horse is kind of moving kind of like shaking your bed but the saddle isn't slipping also when your cinch is proper you want to make sure that it's behind the elbow that it's not going to cause any galls any hair loss or scraping here you should be able to with a lot of force with a lot of force you should be able to take a couple of fingers and slide it underneath this cinch but it should be a major effort and it should be almost uncomfortable for you and almost uncomfortable for the horse now whether this is nylon or leather doesn't matter whether you're able to use this buckle or not a lot of times i recommend if people are trail riders and you're going on a lot of uphills and downhills if you know how your horse is saddled take a a sharpie pen or something and mark this and go ahead and and make an auxilary hole here so that you have this buckle that helps stabilize this horse if if your knot came undone if your nylon or your leather broke or your d-ring or something you have this that actually buckles in somewhere that gives you just a little bit of extra safety and security hardly anybody does it but i just want to give you all the information we can right now this horse is saddled some people will include a breast collar some people will put a back cinch on a lot of you that have mules well you know there's a lot of rigging that's going to go behind here on a mule oh you do have one okay also you don't want a buck so you don't want this to be real tight because that's how they make horses buck is with this back cinch being tight now we've got a breast collar as well she's hooking up her breast collar now the other thing that i recommend and i made a video about it is if you're going trail riding riding in a ditch on the side of the road even in a pasture i recommend that you go ahead excuse me girls is leave the halter and the lead rope on the horse put whatever type of controlled devices hackamores bozos bits bridles headstalls what have you around the horse but leave this on we made a video about it check it out ladies and gentlemen this has been another stall13.com video boy you girls did great take care of yourself and your horses