Can saddle pads make up for an ill-fitting saddle?

Saddle pads can absorb some shock and thicker pads or pads with shims can fill spaces that are too large, but unfortunately, there is no way a pad will fix a saddle that is too long or too narrow. Just continue your search for a new and better saddle. There are damages that horses can recover from once fitted properly to a saddle. They can rebuild atrophied muscle and inflammation will go down once the irritant is removed, and anything else will at least slow or stop in progression. You are doing a really great thing for your horse. There are a lot of riders that would ride their horse for their whole career in an ill-fit saddle and wonder why their horse won't perform at their peak or why their horse goes lame in the hocks or won't collect. With only 6 months in an ill-fit saddle, your horse should should be okay if he has not shown any signs of soreness or kissing spine yet. Just do your best to get him something better ASAP.

Sazzy and Sabrina have good answers. Yes a pad can help but will not obviate the need for a saddle that is close to fitting. My advice would be to use this opportunity to ride bareback and try out a bunch of your friends saddles.

A top quality pad is always a good help for your horse so you might want to get one now as you are starting your shopping. I like Equipedic and Grandeur. Many people I know swear by Skito as well. These all have a foam insert style where you can refresh the pad with new foam inserts. These pads run 200-400 but last a very long time and make things so much nicer for your horse.

You might get some good advice from a local equine chiropractor or body worker on finding and fitting a saddle for your horse. They see unfortunately a lot of saddle induced injuries and understand the issues.

Depends on the problem. They will make a narrow saddle tighter, just like wearing thick socks in tight shoes.

But they can help a wide saddle fit better.

Nothing is going to help a saddle that's too long.

Since your saddle is to narrow and long, your best bet would be not to use it until you get a new. Either stick to ground work, or borrow something that fits.

If you continue to use a poorly fitting saddle, you could will become sore and will probably develop some behavior issues due to pain.

Glad you're getting a properly fitting saddle! Your horse will be much happier.

If your horse was really that tortured for these months, you would have noticed some serious behavior issues. Since you don't mention any, I would not worry about this so much.

Arabs don't usually have mutton withers. They usually have pronounced withers and a round barrel chest, with a short back.

I find that most barrel saddles (medium tree or semi-bars) will fit an arab pretty well. So you can try those in the meantime.

Saddle pads can help make very minor adjustments, i.e when I had my previous saddle my fitter showed me how and when to use a riser pad on my mare as she was going through a bit of a bum high funny growth at the time.

However, they won't make up for massive problems - and that sounds like what your saddle is. If you continue to ride in that saddle you are going to do some serious damage, particularly the fact it is too long you are riding on an extremely weak and sensitive area of the back. The fact it's too wide will also cause it not to move right with your horse.

Basically, you are setting your horse up for some serious muscle damage by continuing to ride in that saddle, and once you've caused that damage it is extremely hard to reverse. Not to mention your horse's behaviour is likely to go down hill when he gets sore.

I know saddles are expensive, but they are also massively important to get right - and I personally would not ride my horse again until I got it sorted.

If your saddle is too narrow and you're using more than 1 pad, depending on the thickness, you're damaging your horse's wither area.

Also, if the saddle alone is already too narrow, that hurts and does damage as well.

I would say, stop using that saddle and wait til you can get your new one.

It's really not fair to the horse.

If a saddle is a little bit too WIDE then you might be able to get away with getting the right saddle pad that can make up the difference.

If the saddle is too NARROW, there's nothing you can do. It's painful for the horse and damaging his muscle there.

They can help it for a while, best thing to do would be to use a saddlecloth, then get a gel sheepskin half pad. the gel with absorb some of it