For this blog I’m going to try something a little different – I have invited my wife Sabine to take the floor – and be warned; this is going to be a pretty blatant pitch for the difference a female saddle  can make to your comfort and riding!

Hi – this is Sabine Schleese writing to you; this guest appearance is actually due to a conversation I have recently had with someone who just a while ago became a complete convert to what Jochen has been writing about all these months – and therefore I decided to tell you about my personal experience.

Schleese began actually manufacturing saddles about 18 years ago, after many many of our female clients began confiding in my husband that they were having ‘female problems’ while they were riding. Anything from bladder infections, back aches, kidney problems, and being rubbed bloody. Why?? Well the light bulb moment kind of came when I finally came clean myself – Jochen always asked me (and whoever else female was around in the office at the time; and back then there weren’t too many of us!) – to come and sit in whatever saddle was coming out of Quality Control. I have to be honest – I usually found every single saddle that I sat in to be relatively uncomfortable! (Thank goodness they were usually right for whomever they had been made for, but I had to lie through my teeth and tell him I thought they were wonderful). I took my heart pill after many months of this and finally decided to tell him the truth – which prompted him to take a plaster cast of my butt just to find out why this was an apparently ongoing issue with me.

Long story short, for me personally (because I really have no ‘booty’ to speak of) the Wave is IT. It’s the first saddle that I really felt “aaaahhh” in when I sat in it. This is coincidentally the same saddle that the above-mentioned ‘convert’ also likes (we’re built pretty similarly), but the point of the conversation with her then became “well, why did it take you so long?” She replied that a certain inertia had taken over, everything was ‘fine’ with her old saddle, but - for her the saddle sold itself when she sat in it (and no, she didn’t buy it from us, although it is a Schleese Wave). So we discussed this phenomenon a bit, and it became clear that this is perhaps the message that needs to be put out there – when is enough, enough? How much pain do you need to be in before it leads you to try something else? How many husbands/boyfriends/significant others out there have heard “not tonight dear, I’ve been riding!” What is your basis for rationalization? Write me and tell me YOUR experiences with your saddles and why ‘fine’ is acceptable to you when ‘excellent’ is an option? How much pain is too much pain? Perhaps this should be a topic for discussion in one of the forums. I’m sure many of you have stories to tell!

 

Sabine Schleese

www.saddlesforwomen.com

sschleese@schleese.com

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Comment by Jochen Schleese on December 17, 2010 at 12:00pm

I will deal with the 'money' issue in an upcoming blog. It's less than you think.

Comment by Jenny Mustoe on December 13, 2010 at 1:53pm

I thought it was just me!  I went treeless and wouldn't change back now.

I'm still giggling at the thought of a plaster cast of a bottom.  I'm very childish sometimes.

Comment by 4XChestnut on December 12, 2010 at 3:59pm

"why ‘fine’ is acceptable to you when ‘excellent’ is an option?"  Money.  Specifically lack thereof.  Oh, and spending months and months trying to find a saddle to fit my apparently average horse means that when I find "fine" I'm going with it.

 

I do have a second hand Schleese dressage saddle now, and most of the time I have no issues with it and find it very comfortable.  Some days I do have pain - I'm not sure why.  But since I have read about the saddles designed for women I definitely want to get two - dressage and jumping.  Or maybe three if the little guy needs a different fit when he grows up.

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