03/09/2025
👀 If you use a neoprene girth on your horse, can we talk?
🙂↕️ First off, I get it. You don’t want your saddle to slip, they’re easy to clean, they don’t LOOK like they’ve gotten dirty the way fleece does, they’re marketed as being really breathable, etc. But let’s talk about neoprene girths in a more objective way.
🤲🏼 Some qualities of the neoprene vs effects of those qualities:
🛑 It doesn’t move! - The fact that you can’t budge the neoprene on your horse’s skin also means that the horse’s skin isn’t free to move beneath the neoprene… AND it means when tightening the girth, even if you do leg pulls (please don’t), where the girth created micro pinches while tightening (because it grips the skin), the micro pinches cannot be released. You’ll be riding your horse around while the girth is pinching them.
💨 The ad says “breathable” and touts “air flow” - Neoprene is RUBBER. Rubber is an insulator; it traps electricity and heat. This is part of why wires are contained with rubber… Regardless of the little holes or waffle weave on the girth, your RUBBER girth will be trapping heat to your horse’s body and is why you probably have untacked a horse in a neoprene girth with a sweaty girth mark and no saddle pad mark from the fleece saddle pad……… Waffle weave and holes can’t change the properties of a material.
🧼 They’re easy to clean! - That’s because they’re made of rubber. Go walk around with a bunch of rubber bands on your wrist, grabbing your arm hair all day, and let me know how you feel about how easy the bands are to clean…
🤷🏻♀️ If your saddle is slipping so badly that you need a rubber girth to hold it in place, you need to address the root cause - either your saddle doesn’t fit, or your balance is way off. Either way, supergluing a saddle to your horse for rides isn’t a great solution, right?
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