I 



SADDLE GALLS. 101 



we must in all cases of saddle-injury on the upper part of the back, 

 look upon the tree as the chief cause of hurt. Hence our 

 attention, in the first place, should be directed to obtain a tree 

 which will accurately fit the horse's back, and will thus afford the 

 desired evenly distributed pressure. There is little or no good in 

 trying to remedy faults in the shape of the tree by stuffing, the 

 employment of which, except in inordinate quantities, can only 

 mitigate, not wholly obviate, undue local pressure. 



The modern custom of using felt panels, instead of panels stuffed 

 with flock or curled horse hair, is not an uncommon cause of sore 

 back, on account of the comparative hardness of the felt. Felt 

 panels being less bulky than the other kind, enable a rider to get 

 closer to his horse, and saddles fitted with them can be used with 

 impunity for short periods, as at polo and steeplechasing, but they 

 are not applicable, as a rule, to hunting, especially if the rider is 

 a heavy weight. Felt is too hard for the panels of side saddles. 



The withers become galled, generally, as follows : — (1) By the 

 downward pressure of the gullet plate ; (2) by lateral pressure on 

 both sides, when the arch of the gullet plate is too narrow, or when 

 it has become blocked up by, for instance, too thick a nunulali 

 (felt saddle-oloth) ; or (3) by too much weight being put on the 

 near side of a side-saddle, which disturbance of balance is in- 

 separable from the practice of rising in the trot, and is also 

 caused by the lady using too long a stirrup and sitting too 

 much on the near side, in all of which cases, the injury — 

 supposing that the aroh of the gullet plate is sufficiently high 

 not to press on the top of the withers — 'will be inflicted on the 

 off side of the withers. In order to diminish the drag to the near 

 side, which is only too common among users of side-saddles, the dis- 

 tance apart of the points of the tree of a side-saddle should accu- 

 rately correspond to the thickness of the body of the horse at that 

 part, so as to diminish as much as possible this objectionable near- 

 side drag. It is evident that the greater the distance between the 

 tree and the horse's back, whether caused by too much stuffing in 

 the panel or by the use of too thick a numdah, and the slacker 

 the girths ; the less resistance will the saddle offer to a lateral pull. 

 We ought therefore bear in mind that the amount of stuffing in a 

 panel should be strictly limited to its purpose of interposing a soft 

 cushion between the hard tree and the tender back, and that a side- 

 saddle should be girthed up tighter than a cross-saddle. Not un- 

 frequently with horses ridden by ladies, the off side of the back, just 

 under the cantle, as well as the withers, gets rubbed on account of 

 there being too much stuffing in the panel, and because the girths 

 are too loose. The good effect of the balance strap, particularly 

 in preventing lateral play, should be fully utilised. We cannot get 



