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When is a girth TOO wide?

When is a girth TOO wide??? 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
The short answer is: when it’s too wide in the wrong spot!🤨
For those who would like the long answer:
I am an advocate of a nice wide girth – I mean who doesn’t want their horse to be super comfy with a lovely wide girth that gives a better spread of pressure across your horse’s sternum? 🙋🙋‍♀️ But it’s also important that the girth gives enough room behind the horse’s elbow for them to be able to move comfortably.
I saw a new girth that was lovely and wide and I thought “wow, these would be great for pressure distribution and making the horse nice and comfy”. 👏👏 So I grabbed a couple to try as I was interested in selling them in the store - but my horse just did not want to go forward in it!
I swapped back to his normal girth and he was happy as Larry, then back to the new wide girth and he became cranky pants! So I watched it on the lunge I could see that it was really restricting the rearward movement of his front legs and was just too wide behind his elbows. 😬😬
In these 2 photos you can see the difference between this girth and the one I normally use and you can see how my normal girth is nicely cut away behind the elbows and gives plenty of room. It still has a reasonable width underneath and my horse is certainly a happy chappy in this girth! 😊
 
The other one was just too close to his elbow and you can see the measurements in this comparison photos to see how much wider at this point it was (3cms!) 😯
So when choosing a girth – certainly go for a nice wide base on the girth but always check the elbow room especially if your normally forward horse doesn’t want to step out. And if your horse/pony just has no room in his girth groove area then you may need to opt for something a bit narrower anyway. It’s an individual thing for each horse and saddle combination! 🏇🏇

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