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Treeless Saddle pads for our saddles ...

Our saddle pads are simple, soft, washable, foam pads mainly to keep your saddle clean from sweat, dirt and debris.  They can also be used for the same purpose for any typical english saddle since our saddles are shaped in an english style for smallest required footprint.

1. Our Bareback Treeless Saddles under panels are built to provide your horse with extreme safety from girth and stirrup pressures over the back.  This may raise your center of gravity a bit more than expected at first.  Usage will result in foam compression, resulting in settling into a safer, more secure feeling ride position over time.

2. Additional saddle pads are required if your horse not does have the proper shape to provide you with a stable riding base.  Most likely required for thinner withers.

3. There is a break-in time required to compress the foam under your loading.

4. Some measure of additional saddle padding may be required after extreme use over an extended period of time - depending on your ride frequency - for further girth and posting protection.

Longer version ...

A special purpose treeless saddle pad is not needed with our "Bareback Treeless Saddles".  A latex seat pad is sewn into the suspension over the top of foam padded panels providing spinal channel relief.  The fit of these panels along your horses spine is important for keeping your saddle centered down the back.   For your average horse, our treeless saddle pads or any other minimal saddle pad should be sufficient to keep your saddle clean.  Saddle pad wither relief should correspond to your horses wither height.

Our Treeless Saddle is designed with the average horse in mind.  It is designed to fit in the hollow just behind average sized wither and shoulder muscles.  It is intended for the rider to sit behind the withers - where we believe the horse can best carry your weight.  If your horse has a longer back, with the lowest point further back from the withers - you may choose to position the saddle there - in a more traditional saddle position, but you should understand you are concentrating your weight in an area that may not handle direct weight loads as well.

Additional info for thin withered Horses, Ponies, Mules

Some type of compensation padding Would be Required for thin withers.   If your horse is thin withered, there are inexpensive products that could improve your ride and your horses comfort - significantly but they would take effort on your part to find proper customization.  A thin withered horse can be prone to saddle fitting problems and a lack of muscle mass in front of your saddle can also result in our Treeless Saddles slipping forward.

We are providing links from our own research to help with selecting a pad which complements our Treeless Saddles and appreciate any recommendations.  We hope you'll shop around and find a good fit for your horse.  There are many variations and several fall far short of actually making a large difference up front - where the padding is needed. 

When considering custom pads... The Toklat web site does not promote their custom pads, but we have been informed that they will make them to your specification.  If considering this option, we recommend you consider your horses build while looking at the rest of the links provided below.  If paying to have a custom pad built, be very clear in how much additional padding is required in front to achieve a balanced saddle fit.

Considerations for design:

• Thickness required at front to prevent saddle slide and support thighs
• Padding edge tapering/contouring
• Shaped to fit in withers hollow
• Shaped to accommodate the saddle
• Positioning on your horse
• Additional padding desired under the seat?
• Will pockets be useful for alternative padding in future?