At the ugliest stage...
We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.
I still think this is the ugliest stage of a saddle tree - right after it is rawhided before the top of the rawhide gets dry. But it seems fitting that these trees are outside in the wind (no sun today) to see if they can get dried off a bit more quickly…
Because this time of year I think is the ugliest stage of the year too. All the winter dust and dirt is still around. There is still snow on the ground, and nothing is greened up yet.
The flower beds still have the remnants from last fall that have sat under the snow all winter...
And it is a cool, grey day, with everything too wet and cold to start going out and cleaning up all the branches that came down in the big windstorm in January…
So I figured that it is a good day to show you trees at their ugliest stage too...
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Here are a couple of Will James trees going to the same maker down in Georgia. One is 13 ½” wide and one is 13” wide. This is probably the coldest they will ever be…
This is an 8” wide Wade with a 3 ¼” Guadalajara style horn cap.
And here is a 13 ½” wide wood post Packer style tree modelled off pictures the maker sent to us. (Don’t worry about the puckers. They will be fine. I told you this was the ugly stage…)
Along with all that, meet Wilma! She’s the latest resident in our menagerie (which is probably a more representative term than remuda around here…) No, Wilma is not ugly! But you have to admit that the “half shed out” stage is probably the ugliest stage of the year for a horse as well.
She also has been fed from a cattle round bale feeder this winter, so the base of her mane is pretty well rubbed out. And they had a new horse added lately who knocked Wilma out of the top horse position in their herd of five, so she has some scrapes and bald patches to show what that struggle was like.
But she’s hard to take a picture of because she’s so sweet she just wants to come up and be petted…
So yup, when you get looking at things, overall it looks like almost everything is at the ugliest stage right now.
But wait…
Just give us a couple weeks...
