Saddlery

While in Pendleton, OR we stopped to see the oldest western wear and saddle shop in continuous operation. Hamley's has been in operation in this exact building since 1905. There were known for making the "finest saddles man could ride", and they continue to make saddles today. 

This machine was called the "clicker". It cut multiple layers of leather using a force up to 50,000 lbs

This is a Hamley's saddle from 1922 that was sold to Hoot Gibson

Duff Severe was a renowned saddle maker who apprenticed at Haley's.

Here's a description of the bronze art work of Duff

Duff was famous for his detailed miniature saddles

Across the street from Hamley's we ran into Rod, another saddle maker,

and another character!

Rod told us about his life riding broncs, drinking too much, coming clean and now working out to make a comeback appearance in a rodeo to honor his brother who died in a rodeo accident. 

I bought his book and will be able to tell you more about Rod once I'm finished. 

But, keep your eyes/ears open to see if miracles do happen,

which, according to Rod, is a given!

 

Oh, What a Ride

By now you have probably read about my new (to me) saddle. After suffering incredible pain torture on rides in western saddles owned by my friends, I decided that it was really important to truly test the Tucker saddle to make sure that it would be the saddle for me. I have discovered that as I have gotten older my knees grow less tolerant of torque created by the fender on Western saddles and my posterior, with less padding than in younger years, suffers from pounding on hard saddles. So, one morning, not so long ago.....

8:15: lightly groom and tack Doc, lunge
8:35: mount and begin to ride south to meet 'M'
9:05: connect with 'M' on her cute Paint/Quarter horse and head toward open community property
9:15: begin a loop of the community property (down the hill, through the marshy area, across the dam, through the field, across the bridge, up the hill). This loop included some trotting and a bit of cantering and is about a mile in length.
10:00: ride up the street with 'M' as she heads home.
10:10: ride down the street, with Doc calling plaintively to 'M's' horse.
10:15: ride into 'F's' yard and chat as she and friends finish tacking their horses.
10:20: ride out to the community property (down the hill, through the marshy area, across the dam, through the field, across the bridge, up the hill). We head back to the low area and spend some time trotting in large circles in this nice, flat area.
11:00: leave community area and begin a 1.3 mile loop along the roads.
11:20: arrive back at my barn. I hop off the horse and I am pleasantly surprised that I can land on both feet and remain upright. My knees are working and there is no pain. My first few steps are steriotypically 'cowboy' steps, with a wide stance, but within moments I feel fine. The Tucker saddle rocks! It is a keeper!

Oops! I Did it Again!

How would you fill in the blank?

One can never have enough ___________________.

Apparently I would have to insert the word 'saddles', as I now have saddle # 4!

Last year I stopped by a large saddle shop and tried saddles that were appropriate for Haflingers. There were three options. Sad, but true. One was a hugely expensive, very heavy, beautifully tooled, hand-made western saddle. I immediately struck that off my list due to the weight and price. The next was a Tucker, with a 'gel cush' seat.  A little bit of heaven, but a bit pricey. The third was a Fabtron. This was a pleasant mix of leather and synthetic and was light and comfy. But, would the saddle stand the test of time? I left without a saddle.

Through Craig's List I found a used Tucker about six months ago. I was thrilled. My dream saddle at a good discount. Sadly, the saddle did not fit the boys. The tree was too narrow and pinched my guys' withers/shoulders.

Then, I won the bid for my funky military police saddle at an auction. The saddle was a great fit for the boys and a good fit for me. The price was great. It was light. I was in love. I rode in the saddle, a lot. I was happy.

I was content, that is, until a friend told me of a Tucker saddle at a local tack resale shop. Oh no! I resisted stopping in to check on the saddle for 3 days. Well, OK, it really was only 2 days. The saddle looked perfect. It was the right size for me. The serial number was followed by a "W", as in 'wide tree'. The price was high...a bit over half the retail price. I came home and consulted with my hubby. What a great guy! He told me to go get the saddle and try it out. So, of course I wouldn't disregard what my hubby had to say! I plunked down a blank check and brought the saddle home for a 4-day trial. After spending close to 3 hours in the saddle a few days ago I knew this was the saddle for me. My knees didn't ache. My posterior was only mildly discomforted, and most importantly, the sweat marks on the horse showed even pressure across all areas. Sold! So, once again, I have purchased a new (to me) saddle.

So, it seems that I collect saddles. I guess there are worse things!

What do you collect?

Doc's Diatribe: What's de sense of desensitizing?

My Mrs. Owner took Pippin and me on a long ride in the big, noisy box. When we came out of the box we were at a friend's house for something called desensitizing. Makes no sense to me. I've heard that being sensitive is a good quality. It's something I have to work at because frankly, sometimes I could give a flip how others feel.

This is a picture of me trying to be sensitive to Pippin's feelings in the friend's arena.

We did all kinds of things at the friend's house. I didn't really like the blue walls that you can see to the left of my shoulder in the picture above. I just knew that I would hit my head and it would hurt if I tried to walk through the wall. duh! Uh, Mrs. Owner, where did you go? My Mrs. Owner is magic. One minute she was with me, the next minute she had tele-transported to the other side of the blue wall.


I liked the clip-clop sound I made going over the fake bridge. Who do they think they are kidding by putting a piece of plywood on the ground? Any fool horse would know that bridges don't sound or feel that way.


The friend had a few tarps on the ground. I've seen those before. Pippin carried one around. I wouldn't touch it. In fact, don't tell anyone but I was naughty. When they weren't looking, I took a whiz on one of them!  Tee-hee, it made a funny sound!

This is me standing on the box.

I really didn't want to get up on the box. After all, I'm not some sort of simpleminded, muddle-headed, brainless circus horse. But the friend was very kind and patient. She tricked helped me. She fed me treats. 

Mrs. Owner was busy with Pippin. 

That dang, fool horse was practically crawling on her head trying to get to the treats. He hasn't learned how to act disdainful and aloof.

I had to try on a new saddle. It is called a Barefoot saddle. That's a really silly name because it has nothing to do with your feet. I already have barefeet....four of them. 

My Mrs. Owner said that I should thank Kimberly of Sallys Saddles for letting me try the Barefoot saddle. It is really pretty. It is really light and comfy. It has a horse head on the saddle flap. You can see it in the picture. What do you think? Does the saddle make my butt look big?

Pippin and I had a chance to see a lot of different things. I usually won't admit it, because I'm that kind of a grumpy gus, but I had a lot of fun. 



Mrs. Owner also wanted me to thank Diana for all of the work she did in setting up the arena and for helping me.

One Saddle is Never Enough!

I went to an auction last week and put up a post about the Pariani I bought. Since I already have an English saddle (besides the Pariani) what I intended to buy at the auction was a Western saddle. I wanted something with a little more security for the trail, and something that maybe my hubby might consider using, since it has a built in 'handle'.  I've been casually looking for a Western saddle for the boys, and haven't been able to find anything that fits their somewhat chunky withers. I even tried a wide-tree Tucker saddle and the points of the tree dug into their shoulders. My dear husband and I had already planned to load the boys in our trailer to take a trip to a large saddle shop about 2.5 hours from home, but, thought we'd check the auction...just in case there was something that might work. I brought a template I had made from styrofoam, which I could lay inside a saddle to get an idea of how well it may or may not fit. I found about 3 saddles that might work. One was very strange indeed. It was some sort of English saddle that had morphed into a Western, or visa versa. I kinda know that feeling....I'm an English rider from way back, but I love the cowboy thing out west. So I guess I'm morphing as well. Anyway, this particular saddle got stuck in 'mid-morph'!

There were at least 3 of us that were interested in this strange saddle. The other two parties had draft crosses and encountered the same problems I have experienced with fitting Western saddles. This saddle seemed to have a wide tree and it was in excellent condition.  I wondered if it had actually been ridden in. It certainly looked weird, but it began to grow on me. After talking it over with my dear husband, we decided that we would bid on this saddle and hope that it would fit the boys. Well, obviously since Doc is modeling the saddle, we were top bidders!
The saddle had a stamp for the saddle maker; D. Galli from Las Vegas, NV. I found his web site but could not find any pictures of saddles that looked like this model. So, I emailed Doug. Boy, was I surprised (and pleased) to get a return email within a few hours. Doug wrote, "OMG! That is one of my saddles that I made 4 years or so ago.The design came about when I was asked to make several saddles for the UNLV  mounted police.  I had black leather left over from that project so I decided to make a couple more without all the police gear. 

The saddle has an Equiflex tree from Steele Saddle Tree Company and I used grade 1 black drum dyed Wickett and Craig leather . In total there are only 6 like the one you have including the ones that I made for UNLV."

Anyway, I'm thinking this is kinda cool to have such a unique saddle. I  love it. And, since I still don't have a Western saddle..........

Ride Cut Short by Snail

An ominous cloud started to form just as I finished grooming and saddling Pippin. We headed down to the round pen to make sure Pippin was listening to me before I mounted. Let me assure you, he was not! 

He was happily cantering and trotting around, totally ignoring me. But, what's important....listening to Mrs. Owner or having a good time?! Just as he began to think about doing what I was asking of him, the rain drops began to fall. Nice, fat, wet rain drops. Falling on my nice, new to me, antique (as in over 25 years-old) saddle that I had just purchased at an auction yesterday. The saddle is the same exact model as the one I rode in while in college. It spoke to me at the auction. It implored me to buy it. It knew that no one, well almost no one, would know what it was. The auctioneers (cowboys, all three - uh, I didn't mean for that to sound like an insult. I love cowboys, they just don't understand a whole bunch about English saddles!) couldn't even pronounce it's name and announced that my Pariani was a German saddle - the affront! 

 

Here's one of my Senior pictures from college riding Marmalade in my original Pariani.

(That almost sounds like the old Maidenform Bra ads..."I dreamt I was riding in my Maidenform Bra Pariani saddle!")

Hey, and doesn't that look of mine look especially dreamy?! What was I thinking? Probably, "When will this photographer ever finish...I am bored and my horse is tired of pointing her ears and standing still"!

Here's my 'new' Pariani. Lovely, isn't it?! I spotted it across the room. There were saddles piled all over the place. There were well over 100 western saddles, 35 youth saddles, ten or so Aussie's, a handful of pack saddles and six English saddles. My eyes were drawn to this and it was love at first, well OK, since it is a replacement, second sight! Other than the girth, which is too large and has stretched-out elastic, the saddle is in incredibly good shape. It looks as good as new.

So, of course I wanted to try the saddle out at the first opportunity today. Sadly, our rain continued. The thunder began to rumble and Pippin and I made a hasty retreat. The rain began to change subtly and we experienced 'snail'. It wasn't snow. It wasn't hail. The stuff that came down was like tiny snowballs, that even broke apart when they hit hard surfaces!

Oh well. It's moisture and we can always use that. I'll have a chance to try the new saddle later on!