Now I would like to talk to you about billet alignment. Make sure you place the saddle in the right spot behind the shoulder. Look at your billets, if they hang perpendicular to the ground in the right area, the girth area, you can be sure that your saddle won’t be dragged forward or backward.
Let me show you a saddle where the billets hang too far back. As you can see in the video, the billets are not hanging in the girth area. Gravity will bring the girth and billets into the girth area, but now something really bad happens, the saddle gets driven into the shoulder area and on top of the shoulder. A horse’s scapula has the top cap which is cartilage, and it will cause damage if the saddle keeps pushing into that bone and cartilage.
Its kind of like on your back; pretend that your finger is the saddle and the saddle keeps pushing behind the shoulder every time you take a step. This kind of reaction is only tolerated in this area for so long in the horse, and if the cartilage and bone gets chipped away that is what we consider long-term damage. We do not want to see that!
What’s the opposite? When the saddle goes into the elbow area, the girth will slide back and will make him sore on the elbow and the saddle will drag too far back. You may think that is great because now you protected the horse’s shoulder, but now the saddle sits in the horse’s loin area, lumbar area, kidney area, and if you have a mare the ovary area. This is especially bad when your horse is in season and the ovaries are active. It is not a good idea to have pressure there!