Picking a Horse Saddle

Series Summary

Man has enjoyed a unique relationship with the horses on this planet. Horses have carried us into battle, brave and without fear. They’ve helped us travel over long stretches of terrain. In some parts of the world they still pull our farmer’s plows and carry our loads. They’ve been indispensable in herding and driving our cattle. The police have mounted horse patrols for crowd control situations in urban environments. No question, horses have proven to be well-suited for human life, expressing qualities of loyalty and bravery, responding to commands, and usually having a calm, docile demeanor. Though horses can be ridden bareback, most of us like the securely of having something to keep us on a horse. The saddle is an integral part of horseback riding equipment, and because of the craftsman ship it takes to make a saddle, they can be quite an investment as well. In this free video series, get tips for picking a horse saddle. Our expert, Kathy Kentala, teaches horseback riding lessons to children and adults. She gives you tips on buying and selecting a saddle for your needs. Learn about youth saddles, adult saddles, and western saddles. Also, learn the different parts of a saddle. If you have been considering making the investment, get some tips about buying horse saddles today!

Video Transcript

"Choosing a saddle can be not only a difficult decision, but one that requires a lot of time and patience in shopping. It helps if we start out understanding what we're buying and what we might expect to pay. I usually coach my clients in trying to find the very best used saddle possible. If they are in fact in a bit of a budgeted plan. If we buy a brand new saddle, one we have to break it in, and sometimes it's fun to have that happen before we get it. But it's also going to be very pricey, and it may become even more pricey as we look at the time that we have to spend shopping. We want to start out with thinking about a synthetic saddle, although not my very favorite, it does fall in the more budgeted category. We'll talk about the merits of the synthetic versus leather down the road. But these saddles can be found even brand new for as low as two hundred fifty to three hundred dollars. As I move into my youth saddles, a brand new saddle of this type might be about three hundred and fifty dollars to four hundred dollars. We move on up to a nice barrel saddle of a name brand, that's going to be better probably upwards of eight hundred dollars. This saddle in its original show condition could bring it up to near a thousand. As we move on forward, some of these more showy saddles as well as a really good functional cutting saddle, you can go with name brands that will take you as high as three thousand and upward, I've seen them as high as six thousand. So you can see you've got a wide variety of choices, and you're going to have to decide within your budget what's your best option."