The More Things Change ...

The shop at the Pullman Family Farm, summer 2012

This year has brought some pretty dramatic changes to my life. This summer, we had to put our dear old Tanka dog down due to the infirmities of old age.  Then, Edie passed away on Sept. 20, and my brother-in-law Chris passed away 15 days later - oddly, from  the very same cancer Edie had.  And on Oct. 26th, I learned that as of November 30, my time with the shop will be over.

The owners have decided to move the physical location of the shop closer to their home - understandable, since their commute is about 60 miles one-way.  However, the new location they've chosen puts the shop 60 miles away from me. That would mean that my 40 mile round-trip commute would morph into a 120 mile round-trip commute ... and that ain't gonna happen.  Not for me, and sadly, not for my co-worker Nancy Okun, either - her commute would actually be 12 miles longer than mine.  So as of 5 pm on Nov. 30, after roughly 14 years with the shop, it's officially good-bye.

Change is unsettling, no question - but after the first terrifying, stomach-dropping shock, it often turns out the be just the kick in the ass that was needed.  Since Edie sold the shop in 2009, things have changed significantly; I've become increasingly restless, and have spent more and more time contemplating the possibility of "going independent" and running my own business ... and if this isn't the universe telling me that now's the time to do just that, I miss my guess.

In the years I worked with Edie, I learned about saddle fitting, repair and design ... and I also learned her particular business philosophies, practices and ideals, those specific ingredients that made a little tack shop up over the indoor arena 3 miles off the main road in a town of less than 4,000 people the go-to place for saddles and fitting.  So I'd say that I have a very successful business model to use.  I've also met some outstanding folks in the saddle business who've helped and taught me: Nikki Newcombe, Ann Forrest, Nancy Temple, Patty Barnett, Rob Cullen, John, Gemma and Cassie Hartley, Frank Baines, Victoria Coleman, Mike Scott,  Brita Rizzi and Louise Palmer, to name just a very few, and since they've heard the news, they've been even more kind and supportive.  And since the change has become public knowledge in the saddle world, Nancy and I have had three people very kindly approach us with offers to rep saddles, and we're going to take them all on.  I'll still be taking saddles to barns and traveling to do adjustments; I'll also be working long-distance with templates and photos, and I'll still be writing this blog, same as ever.  I'll also be setting up my own web site, which will have fitting info and - new feature - videos.  In deference to the fact that I need a regular income, I will have to find a "real" job, at least for a while, but my focus will be on getting back into saddles full-time as soon as possible.  I truly love doing this, and don't see any reason I should quit.

East Crow Saddlery - Patty's Web Site!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Patty Barnett of East Crow Saddlery, my friend and mentor, has her web site up and running:  East Crow Saddlery.  Take a look - it's a great resource!

Serge and Durability

Good saddles aren't cheap.  All of the new saddles we sell cost more than my first horse - and to be perfectly honest, they all cost more than my first car (which was a used 1973 Chevy Vega of dubious mechanical health).  So when you're buying something that's going to cost you a few weeks' (or more) worth of paychecks, you want it to last.  So what's the expected life span of a $3500 saddle with cloth panels?!

That's often the concern voiced by our customers when they see a saddle with serge panels.  Back in the day, English saddles had serge panels; at some point (and I'm still researching to find out why), leather became the material of choice.  And while leather panels are still the norm, serge is gaining in popularity, and with good reason.  Serge has a lot of benefits:  it breaks in more quickly, it helps wick sweat and dissipate heat, it's lighter weight, it helps keep the pad from slipping, it dries quickly, it can be a big help with a sensitive or "cold-backed" horse ... and it wears very, very well.

How well?  Ok - remember the "Black Country Rocks Customer Service" post I did a couple months ago?  (Click here if you need a refresher.)  Remember Jenny Kimberly's Black Country Equinox - the 4 and a half year old saddle that's been ridden (by a conservative estimate) more than 6800 miles? Take a look at these photos, and you can see for yourself how well serge panels hold up, even under some pretty extreme conditions.

 

Six thousand, eight hundred miles down, and a LOT more miles left in it.  That's a pretty convincing case for the durability of a serge panel!

Black Country Rocks Customer Service

Customer service is lying in the gutter with multiple stab wounds.  It's going the way of the dodo, the bustle and the rotary-dial phone; finding a company that stands behind its products and goes above and beyond to keep the customer happy is more unusual than finding an ethical politician.  So when you run into it, you have to tell everyone.  So here's a little story about one of those rare gems:  Black Country Saddlery.

Becoming a Saddle Fitter

This is Edie Tschorn:
... and it's all her fault.
When I started working for Edie at the shop back in the late 90's, I worked part-time, selling saddles on-line and filling in for other shop employees on vacations and days off. I was a stay-at-home mom then, and the job was pretty much ideal: it was horse-related, I did most of my work from home, and if I was needed at the shop, it wasn't a problem, since my husband worked nights and could do "day care" with our sons.
Then came the day when Edie said, "Hey, Kitt - how'd you like to learn to do saddle fitting?"
Because it sounded interesting (and because I was totally ignorant of just what it would entail), I agreed.

Here in the US, learning the trade of fitting and repair can be tough. There aren't a lot of educational opportunities, and there were even fewer back when I started. Here were my options:

1) The Society of Master Saddlers' Qualification course. Located in the UK, you need 3 years' prior fitting experience (and you need to have taken their Intro course) to be accepted. The course teaches you what tree shape and panel configuration would work for a given horse, and how to assess a horse's fitting needs, but it doesn't cover flocking or repairs.

2) The Master Saddlers' Association. They will teach you to fit and to flock (no repairs), but (back then, anyway) you needed to be a County Saddlery rep to get in. I wasn't, and had no desire to be, so I didn't.

3) The Cumbria School of Saddle Fitting. David May will teach you everything, but again, it's located in the UK.

Luckily, Edie was determined to have me educated, and decided the best route was to hire a fitter to teach me. So my education began with Nancy Shedrick, a SMS Qualified Saddle Fitter. I learned about flocking and saddle design, and to do a Flair-to-wool conversion (which is kind of a cross between plumbing and surgery, since you need to open the panels and remove air bladders and hoses, replace it with flock, and sew it all back up).

I also attended one of Mike Scott's courses, which focused on saddle fitting with an eye to equine massage, which was something I'd dabbled in in the early 90's. (Mike has his own saddle fitting and equine massage therapy school now. Mike, if you'd gotten your act together sooner, my life would have been much easier!)

My next (and present) mentor is Patty Barnett of East Crow Saddlery. As I've mentioned before, she apprenticed for years with Gary "The Saddle Doctor" Severson, and took over his business when he retired. She's my go-to person when faced with a big, scary repair; she's talked me down off the ledge more than once and explained how to do some repair or retrofit that I wasn't sure I ought to be tackling.

I also attended the SMS "Introduction to the Principals of Saddle Fitting" course in Oct. of '07, and had a chance to meet Kay Hastilow, Ian and Andy Hastilow (no relation to Kay) and Annette Gavin, who were a few of the instructors.

There are also a couple of helpful books out there. One is Repair Your Own Saddlery and Harness, by Robert Steinke; another is To Handmake A Saddle, by John Harry and J.H.L. Shields. Lots of good info to be gleaned from both.

In addition to all of this "formal" education, there's been a lot of head-scratching, meditation, trial-and-error, pure inspiration and pure panic (like the time one of my very elderly and not very well-made flocking irons broke; I'd inserted about 16" of iron into a saddle panel and pulled out about 6"). I've deconstructed and reconstructed an unholy number of junker saddles that Edie acquired just for that purpose; I've spent hours practicing stitching and cutting and skiving and splicing. Edie (who has a real gift for mechanical reasoning) has helped me with a lot of the "nuts and bolts" aspects of repairs, like riveting and which drill bit to use. She also has a machine shop here on the farm, downstairs from the tack shop (you can see it in the photo, behind the tractor), which is full of useful and wonderful tools (Edie's as big a tool fan as I am).

My education continues, of course - one of the best things about this job is that there's always something new to learn: a saddle company comes up with a new innovation, or you run into a horse shaped like no other you've seen, or someone comes up with a new theory on saddle fitting. I'm also lucky in that I can contact any of the folks mentioned above to ask questions (which I do on a pretty regular basis) and share ideas.

All joking aside, I owe a lot to Edie - she's supported me and guided me, and always made sure I had what I needed to learn the job and do it right; she's been a great boss and an even greater friend. Thanks to you, Edie, this is the first time in my almost 50 years that I've been able to have a job with horses that didn't require a second job to finance it!