Dear horse friends,
with this website we would like to sensitize you for an ever present topic: “Saddles – their fit, their pressure distribution, and their flexibility”.
Before you get bored now and click on as you may do with other "horsy websites", hold on and take some time to browse through it as you will notice very soon that we are of one mind with many riders and their horses, respectively.

Please join us on the way to more relaxation, placidity, and suppleness for the sake of our horses, in sport and recreation.

Your O-M-E-G-A team.

Not again the next „New-Special-Super-Saddle“!
There is not much sense in reinventing the wheel over and over again, but despite a 2000-year-long history of development, there are indeed constantly technical innovations that are not negligible. Today’s saddles have also gone through a very long history of development, but we believe that we can still add to their advancement. To develop and build saddles that meet the requirements of your horse, to provide equestrians with an instrument to advance their horses in a relaxed and especially a healthy way, and to enable them to ride their horse while at the same time keeping it well and fit – all this is our goal.

You assume these virtues from every fitting saddle? Almost correct. However, you may know from your own experience that this is not always the case. We made the same experiences. We bolstered saddles up, tried new padding, or used completely new panels. Oftentimes, our customers were fully satisfied and remained so for many years. We examined horse and rider on site, on their own arenas time and time again, but too often, the initial success was short-lived. Soon, old habits and vices like disobedience, a stiff back, wenig Untertritt, stiffness and lack of responsiveness, just to name the most serious symptoms, returned.

A typical, regular dressage-saddle with the frequently criticized small panel and convex padding. Although the saddles seemed to fit well, the equestrians still had the feeling that it must be the saddle, or a least the back, that causes their horse’s stiffness, disobedience, their putting up a defense or even their tendency to rear during certain lessons. These horses and their riders were our incentive to develop better, back-friendly saddles.

These sensitive horses showed us very clearly whenever they felt discomfort. At the same time, we received feedback from the equestrians. From there, the first O-M-E-G-A saddles with an anatomically sensible saddle tree were developed: the “Anatomic” tree.

You are certainly right when you throw in now that tens of thousands of horses walk just fine with regular saddles; we can confirm this. However, we also know that thousands of horses are unable to tap their full potential or even have problems with today’s saddles of different brands and price ranges even if they seem to fit well.

Oftentimes, we were under the impression that those regular saddles are too intense in their force. They may permit the subtlest aids by the horseman, i.e. they transmit intended pressure, but unfortunately, they transmit unintentional pressure as well. In the same way, the horse itself may inflict saddle-caused dismay through unbalanced movements. So what does all this imply?

In our opinion, these saddles are merely special tools that should be used by professional riders immediately before or during a test, but on no account for daily work or training. Most of these saddles are, whether intentionally or unintentionally, designed in a way that allows even the subtlest aids by the horseman to be transmitted directly and instantly, and thus to cause pressure.

Few horses and riders in the beginning of their training possess the necessary sensitiveness that is needed to employ this pressure goal-oriented, i.e. to use weight aids to support the horse in exactly the right second, always anticipating the coming movement. Now, hand on heart: who among us ordinary riders has this ability and owns a horse that will join in? Who among us can influence the horse’s use of hind quarters or forelegs just by his sitting position? Few can do so when guided; hardly anyone when on his own for some time. It is much more likely that you are constantly applying too much pressure, that you are transmitting wrong pieces of information to your horse through the saddle, and that you, by doing so, take away his interest for participation instead of motivating him.

Instead of moving forwards or upwards gracefully, aversion is slowly creeping in. Due to the constant bruises and misinformation, the horse has quit the back activity that is so important for his musculoskeletal system.

The time-frame until the back will quit the service is naturally dependent on the sensibility and constitution of the horse as well as on the weight and competence of the rider.

Many old-timers in the horse business merely have a weary smile for the topic of back and saddle problems. Back in the times, when everything was better, hacks were ridden with any half-decent saddle, and the ones who refused were simply “goatish” and not worth being ridden or trained.

So far, so good. However, back then, most horses had a shorter back and were generally more robust. Impetus and physique were generally less developed. Back then, most horses did not stay in their box for 23 hours a day. Back then, fewer horses were “under the saddle” and what is now called ‘recreation riding’ just began to blossom within the last 30 years along with today’s national sport tournament riding.

Thus, back then, nothing was easier or better, it was merely the preconditions and the sensibility that were different.