Visit from the FnE Team!

Awesome day yesterday. Had a visit from Les and Agneta, the designers and builders of our Free n Easy Endurance Pro saddle, as they were having a 'little tour' of France. They were both brilliant at explaining certain aspects of fitting the saddle that I hadn't completely understood - like the 'rounding gap' and where to look for it. Les had a look at Rubi and spotted quite early on that he's sore in his poll and his neck muscle. He asked me whether Rubi had ever pulled back when tied up - well, when he first arrived it was a regular occurrence to pull back and break the bailer twine and pig off round the garden. So it would seem he's managed to put his poll out doing that, which less than desirable!

Les said the saddle was set up pretty well overall but spent over an hour fine tuning the fit, watching me ride Rubi in the saddle at all paces. He adjusted the panels a little to create more lateral balance, and then also adjusted the position of the front girth straps so that we had no forward slippage at all (we had maybe 1cm previously). Les also radically adjusted my stirrup bar position to fit my little feet better - so now I don't have a chair seat any more! Rubi seemed more and more happy and it was much easier to rise to the trot. As Les said, my feet are more underneath me now so I'm not having to rise as far, which is just less tiring for all concerned.

Les also gave me a new girth as a free upgrade - the new girth has a different liner and the front and back straps are different lengths and can also be interchanged to really fine tune the girth fit. The idea is that the front girth strap should fasten up out of the way of the elbow and the shoulder, rather than only the elbow. I'll have to get a photo to show the new one.. easier to show than explain. They are also going to send me a pair of new panel pads with 25mm foam in them rather than 20mm as part of their free upgrade programme. And finally, Les spotted that my old stirrup leathers were no longer equal lengths - one had stretched to be longer by about 8mm (despite being non-stretch) so I bought a new pair of webbers off him while we were at it!

Awesome service and awesome product!

Go Team FnE!