25/06/2026
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Today's dressage riders say that the new saddles are more comfortable for the horse. With the advances in saddle design and flocking, this might be true. However, while their tree design is probably more physically comfortable, these saddles enable a new and different kind of discomfort for horses in how they encourage riders to use these saddles to inflict pain.
Current dressage riders regularly demonstrate one of the most egregious changes in dressage over the past several decades. While more vertical riders from the past rode balanced in shared unity of motion with their horses, their saddles were minimal and neutral. Those saddles didn't aid or restrict a rider's position. By contrast, the modern dressage riders are often unbalanced and restricted by their saddles with high cantles and huge thigh blocks or knee rolls that allow riders to lean back and use her body weight to increase their ability to apply intense rein pressure.
The visual difference between the old and new riders is inescapable. The older riders are relaxed and balanced while the modern ones are unbalanced as if "water skiing" off their horse's mouth with the help of a saddle that contains their imbalance. The older riders work with their horse's energy while the others regularly oppose their horse's energy with significant force.
The high cantles and the huge knee rolls/thigh blocks allow a rider to multiply their strength with their hands to the bit. Modern dressage riders can easily lean back past the traditional 5 degree limit against the high cantle without unseating themselves. The lower right rider is leaning back almost 20 degrees using much of their body weight to apply inexcusable rein pressure.
The big thigh blocks facilitate riders leaning back by stopping the rider's legs from launching forward beyond the saddle flap when they apply their multiplied body weight to the bit. Imagine trying to apply your leaning back body weight to the reins when riding in a traditional dressage saddle like the pictured Stubben Tristan dressage saddle on the left. You'd fall off the back of your horse.
The older minimal saddles provide better balance and a great deal more communication between the horse and rider. This is important because horses as herd animals need constant communication with their herd, which is the rider when a horse is being ridden. Without real connection stress from separation and isolation increases. This opposes the horse's need for unity of balance and movement with the rider.
Riders can improve their communication skills with their horses by riding in a simpler, more communicative saddle. However in our new commercial era of modern riding, each discipline has more or less created their own separate "horsemanship" with their own set of rules and standards. Many of these separate "horsemanships" have subordinated or abandoned the protection of the horse in favor of fulfilling the expectations and desires of the riders to win with their forced "frames".
Well meaning advocates for the protection of horses are often not educated enough to address the causes of abuse that come from these saddles. Instead they address the symptoms related to equipment like blue tongues or bleeding from the mouth. They blame bits as too harsh when it is these new saddles that allow the riders to abuse horses with intense bit pressure.
Henry Whynmalen said it best, "Let the horse move you." but a horse can't move you sympathetically when your lower body is locked and jammed between a high cantle and giant knee rolls.
