How to Adjust the Stirrups on an English Saddle

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Kelli on behalf of Expert Village and I am going to show you my techniques to saddling a horse with an English saddle. Another thing that you want to make sure you do and you can do this before you mount but it will be easier to get on the horse as well and you are going to want to adjust this. And a good way that you can measure how long your stirrups should be is if you take your arm and you start up at the buckle, your stirrup should be arms length and that is usually an indication of long it should be. This seams that it is a little bit short for me so what I am going to do is lift up the little saddle skirt here. I am going to pull out my stirrup leather and I am going to move the buckle and I am just going to move my stirrup down about 1 notch. I am going to pull my leather back up through. I am just going to take it and measure it again. That seems like it is a pretty good length for me. I may need to adjust this again once I get on the horse but this is a good indication of about how long my stirrups should be. So this is a saddle that I have never ridden in before. That's a good way to measure how long your stirrups should be. Taking a lot of time to mount the horse and figure it out. "