What Is the Proper Way to Cinch a Saddle

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http://www.equestrianlife.com/videos/watch/262/What_Is_the_Proper_Way_to_Cinch_a_Saddle/

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About This Video

Cinching a saddle properly takes practice, as it should be tight enough to keep the saddle from spinning but loose enough for the horse's comfort. Practice cinching a saddle on a horse with helpful advice in this video on horseback riding.

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Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Rick Gore I'm at Travis Equestrian Center and today we're going to be talking about the proper way to cinch a saddle. There's a lot of variations on people on whether or not they want them tighter, looser, snugger, it's a lot of personal preference. I like a saddle to where you don't cut the horse in half when you cinch him but it's tight enough to hold a saddle that if he moves quickly, it's not going to roll but if I stood on one side or moved enough, I could actually slide the saddle a little bit and adjust it. So we're going to talk about adjusting this. This saddle happens to have two cinches, it has a front cinch and a rear cinch. The front cinch, important things about a cinch when you're cinching a horse is you want to make sure on the hair lay, you don't want to have the saddle here and pull forward. You want to make sure that the lay of the hair is correct on the horse so when I pull this tight, it feels comfortable. You want to inspect the cinch. When you're connecting the cinch, I like to hold it to where it's snug right there and then I don't loosen it again. If you're constantly doing this, it irritates the horse and he feels that flapping and messing and then he'll get what's called cinchy, he'll start kicking with his back feet, he'll start biting, he'll start doing things because he doesn't like a cinch constantly doing this. So once I get this cinch in a right position, I want to kind of hold it there with one hand while I'm messing with the rest of the cinch. So when I hold this cinch here, I keep it nice and snug, then I put my second loop and that's pretty much going to hold it. That will secure my cinch enough to where he's, it's not going to go flapping loose and soft. So after I have that through, then I want to have go ahead slide my second loop through. Now some people like to make three and four loops. I don't like doing a lot of loops here because this gets really thick and then when your stirrup comes over it interferes with your riding. So I like one or two little snaps here. One or two loops. I'm going to go ahead and hook it up there, I can get my fingers through there. And then I got that front cinch for the initial one. I like doing a cinch three times, because when you do a cinch, if you do it the first time as tight as it will get, you'll end up making a horse cinchy. You don't want the horse to hate having his belly cinched. So you want to make it as comfortable and as smooth as you can so it doesn't bother the horse. So I put one on there, it's kind of loose, I know it's laid right, I can put my second cinch on, usually a rear cinch, doesn't have the loops, it's got snaps so it's a little bit easier. And again I would be moving to the other side and checking the same thing on the other side. Make sure it's laid flat, there's no kinks, twists, there's no burrs or nothing, it's nice and smooth. After I get it good, I adjust the pad, get my saddle correctly, I may go ahead and take up a second cinch there, another loop. Is I want to get any kinks of skin underneath here. So I want to get those out, I'm going to have him lift his front leg and stretch right here you're going to see the skin pull right there. That tells me there's no kinks or burrs or nothing in there and I'll do that again with both feet. After I do that, I know my horse is cinched correctly. If you're looking for the right way to tighten a cinch, there's not a right way. It needs to be tight enough so the saddle doesn't spin but not tight enough to where it cuts your horse in half. That's the way to cinch a horse.

About The Author

Expert: Rick Gore

Specialty: Horsemanship

It is never the horse's fault. Good natural horsemanship and a true understanding of horses will always get the best results with a horse.

9	Craig Thompson	Orion	USA	Withdrawn						Withdrawn				Withdrawn
20	Ashley Leith	ESB Irish Doctrine	USA	Withdrawn						Withdrawn				Withdrawn
15	Kristin Schmolze	Cavaldi	USA	51.00	51.67	56.67	--	70.3	47	Withdrawn				Withdrawn
32	Corinne Ashton	Dobbin	USA	68.33	70.00	66.67	--	47.5	12	Withdrawn				Withdrawn
6	Mike Winter	Kingpin	CAN	65.67	66.00	67.67	--	50.3	17+	Eliminated				Eliminated
17	Susie Beale	Isabella II	GBR	56.67	58.00	59.67	--	62.8	42	Eliminated				Eliminated
21	Sandra Donnelly	Buenos Aires	CAN	61.33	59.33	62.33	--	58.5	34	Eliminated				Eliminated
26	Karl Slezak	Kachemak Bay	CAN	58.00	59.67	57.00	--	62.7	41	Eliminated				Eliminated
54	Tamra Smith	Chaos Theory	USA	55.67	51.00	49.33	--	72.0	48	Retired				Retired
35	Stanislas de Zuchowicz	Quirinal de la Bastide	FRA	60.33	71.00	68.00	--	50.3	17+	Eliminated				Eliminated
37	Barbara Crabo	Eveready	USA	62.00	60.33	62.00	--	57.8	33	Eliminated				Eliminated
58	Jennifer Wooten-Dafoe	The Good Witch	USA	65.00	65.33	65.00	--	52.3	21	Eliminated				Eliminated
67	Mike Winter	Wonderful Will	CAN	64.67	65.33	64.33	--	52.8	23+	Withdrawn				Withdrawn
68	Jose Ortelli Jr.	JOS Aquiles	ARG	Eliminated						Eliminated				Eliminated
42	Missy Ransehousen	Critical Decision	USA	64.33	66.33	67.67	--	50.8	20	--	0.4	51.2	13	Withdrawn
43	Bonner Carpenter (YR)	Acapulco Jazz	USA	63.67	62.67	60.33	--	56.7	30	--	11.6	68.3	23	Withdrawn
57	Lucinda Fredericks	Headley Britannia	AUS	79.67	78.67	77.00	--	32.3	2	--	--	32.3	1	--	--	32.3	1
51	Bettina Hoy	Ringwood Cockatoo	GER	82.00	84.67	75.67	--	28.8	1	--	9.6	38.4	2	--	--	38.4	2
63	Bruce O. Davidson Jr.	My Boy Bobby	USA	74.00	72.67	75.33	--	39.0	3	--	1.2	40.2	3	--	--	40.2	3
53	Nicolas Touzaint	Hildago de l'Ile	FRA	72.67	73.67	65.00	--	44.3	7	--	--	44.3	5	--	--	44.3	4
61	Lucy Wiegersma	Woodfalls Inigo Jones	GBR	70.33	72.00	71.33	--	43.2	5	--	1.2	44.4	6	--	--	44.4	5
66	William Fox-Pitt	Seacookie	GBR	71.00	70.33	71.67	--	43.5	6	--	2.4	45.9	8	--	--	45.9	6
64	Phillip Dutton	Connaught	USA	69.00	68.00	69.00	--	47.0	10	--	--	47.0	9	--	--	47.0	7
18	Oliver Townend	Carousel Quest	GBR	70.00	74.67	68.00	--	45.2	8	--	--	45.2	7	4	--	49.2	8
30	Tim Lips	Concrex Oncarlos	NED	73.33	72.00	70.67	--	42.0	4	--	--	42.0	4	8	--	50.0	9
11	Stephen S. Bradley	Brandenburg's Joshua	USA	68.00	65.67	70.00	2	48.2	13+	--	0.4	48.6	10	4	--	52.6	10
41	Nicola Wilson	Opposition Buzz	GBR	62.33	65.00	63.33	--	54.7	26	--	--	54.7	15	--	--	54.7	11
2	Phillip Dutton	Woodburn	USA	64.33	69.00	66.00	--	50.3	17+	--	--	50.3	12	4	1	55.3	12
48	Amy Tryon	Leyland	USA	69.33	65.67	67.33	--	48.8	15	--	--	48.8	11	8	--	56.8	13
40	Allison Springer	Arthur	USA	64.33	67.00	68.33	--	50.2	16	--	4.0	54.2	14	4	--	58.2	14
1	Bruce O. Davidson Jr.	Ballynoe Castle RM	USA	60.33	60.67	59.67	--	59.7	38+	20	6.4	86.1	29	--	--	62.9	15
33	Sara Dierks	Somerset II	USA	55.67	62.00	57.00	--	63.2	43+	--	--	63.2	19	--	1	64.2	16
59	Tiffani Loudon-Meetze	Above 'N' Beyond	USA	64.67	61.33	65.33	--	54.3	25	--	12.0	66.3	21	--	--	66.3	17
14	Jolie Sexson	Killian O'Connor	USA	69.33	67.00	69.00	--	47.3	11	--	12.8	60.1	18	8	--	68.1	18
65	Bruce O. Davidson Sr.	Cruise Lion	USA	64.00	61.67	62.33	--	56.0	28	--	9.6	65.6	20	4	--	69.6	19
12	Selena O'Hanlon	Colombo	CAN	67.33	70.33	66.00	--	48.2	13+	--	20.0	68.2	22	4	--	72.2	20
31	Ashley Adams	Vaunted	USA	64.33	41.00	63.33	--	55.7	27	--	2.8	58.5	16	12	2	72.5	21
27	Jan Byyny	Syd Kent	USA	61.00	61.33	64.00	--	56.8	31	20	3.6	80.4	26	--	--	80.4	22
4	William Fox-Pitt	Navigator	GBR	68.67	69.67	68.33	--	46.7	9	20	16.4	83.1	28	--	--	83.1	23
62	Peter Thomsen	The Ghost of Hamish	GER	66.00	62.33	66.00	--	52.8	23+	20	8.4	81.2	27	4	--	85.2	24
50	Debbie Rosen	The Alchemyst	USA	61.67	59.00	60.33	--	59.5	37	20	27.2	106.7	36	4	--	90.7	25
7	Jose Ortelli Jr.	JOS Aladar	ARG	58.33	55.67	59.67	--	63.2	43+	--	27.6	90.8	31	--	--	90.8	26
29	Kelly Sult	Hollywood	USA	53.33	53.00	54.67	--	69.5	46	--	5.6	75.1	25	4	12	91.1	27
22	Cayla Kitayama	Esker Riada	USA	61.00	59.67	60.00	--	59.7	38+	--	9.2	68.9	24	20	3	91.9	28
16	Diana Burnett	Manny	CAN	64.33	64.00	66.33	--	52.7	22	20	15.6	88.3	30	8	--	96.3	29
25	Ronald Zabala-Goetschel	Che Mr. Wiseguy	ECU	63.67	61.33	62.67	--	56.2	29	--	36.4	92.6	32	4	--	96.6	30
52	Stephanie Boyer	Macloud	USA	62.33	62.00	61.33	--	57.2	32	--	37.2	94.4	33	8	--	102.4	31
3	Bruce O. Davidson Sr.	Jam	USA	60.33	57.33	60.67	--	60.8	40	20	25.2	106.0	35	--	--	106.0	32
47	Kyle Carter	Madison Park	CAN	59.67	60.33	62.33	--	58.8	35	20	20.8	99.6	34	8	--	107.6	33
23	Madeline Blackman (YR)	Gordonstown	USA	59.67	55.67	58.33	--	63.2	43+	20	23.2	108.4	37	--	--	108.4	34
60	Tara Ziegler	Buckingham Place	USA	51.33	50.33	50.67	--	73.8	49	40	36.8	150.6	38	20	--	170.6	35
24	Ralph Holstein	Arctic Dancer	USA	60.33	60.00	61.00	--	59.3	36	--	--	59.3	17	--	--	--	--