Youth Horse Saddles

Video Transcript

"As a instructor of many youth riders, I'm frequently asked, how I choose to purchase a saddle, for a youth rider. When we start to look, we want to keep it within our budget. We might be looking at that nicest, used saddle that we can afford. Oftentimes, youth saddles have been lightly used, as the children grow through them so quickly. We want to be sure that we look at the age of the child, the parents of the child, to kind of determine, what is their next growth spurt. There's nothing more frustrating, than having just bought a child's saddle, to find out next year, that expensive saddle no longer fits them. There's a good market for used saddles, and you might be in a position, where that's not such a problem. You sell the old one, bump up to another one, but if you're trying to find the best bang for your buck, and try to keep that saddle within your budget, and hold on to it for awhile, you may need to know a little bit, about the sizing of a youth saddle. This is a twelve inch saddle. I can use it for just about any rider that I have. I've got riders as young as four and five. The stirrups will go up very high. The seat is nice and deep. It holds their leg in a good, solid position. It's safe and sturdy, and probably can be purchased for about two hundred dollars, used. This saddle though, will only last a young rider maybe a couple of years, because they're going to soon bump up to what you might consider, in the way of a thirteen inch saddle. The difference in that inch is going to make a big difference, in how long that they can ride this. My riders of say, seven to ten years old, can usually sit in this saddle quite nicely, but we all know that youth grow pretty quickly, and if you're looking to shop for a saddle for a ten or eleven year old adolescent, you're going to want to consider, getting back into something that's closer to a fifteen inch. Often I have families, who said they were advised to buy that thirteen inch saddle, for their ten year old daughter. Those girls grow up so fast, that within a year, those long legs are well out of that saddle. Just be sure that your stirrups do raise up high enough so that the length is correct, and that they're not so sloppy in the seat, that they're going to have trouble maintaining their balance."