Horse Saddles and the Quality of Italian Leather

Italian leather it's not only about shoes, bags and Christmas presents. Horse riding is heavily involved with leather with saddles, reins and horse harnesses components. The better the quality of the leather, and the manufacturing of course, the better the harnesses will serve to the scope, might it be competition or fun, in whatever discipline. Main subject of the present discussion is horse saddle. What's the importance of the correct choice of a saddle? How can it affect the feeling between man and horse and ultimately their joint performance? How can the quality of the leather influence the above? Hold on, or, to stick to the matter, "hold your horses", we'll go into each single point. As a soft start, why saddles are used in the first place?
Response: support (as a primary purpose). A saddle will support the driver, giving more stability with its ergonomics. And it will support the animal by distributing your weight on a bigger portion of his back. The latter aspect tends to remain in the background so that many people are unaware of it (clearly referring to non Pro here) but its importance is extremely relevant as it translates in a useful recommendation: when it comes to choosing your saddle, seek for one that fits both yourself and the horse. That brings in some complications. If you wanted to follow the advice fully, you would need not only to try the saddle's seance yourself, but ideally try it on your horse. That is generally easier with second hand saddles but it might be complicate with new ones.
Solutions here might be different and range from basing the choice on the horse's withers measure to preparing a sort of template shape of your horse to avoid to bring the bulky "original" along. Whatever your method will be, the message is hopefully clear: make sure that saving your money for your saddle now will not mean spending a fortune for veterinary services in the future to fix the issues caused by a wrong saddle! Your horse's health in relation to saddle choice is something that should worry you on the medium or long run, but still the short run can be affected. It goes without saying that if you choose a saddle that hurts your horse somewhere, interferes with his shoulder's movements or makes him suffer somehow, you should not expect 100% performance.
What to say about the quality of the leather? We said that the saddle primary purpose is supporting. Support should be guaranteed along with the necessary softness to not hurt the horse (and yourself of course!) and materials should be elastic enough not to over-tighten. And you want your saddle to last as much as possible. Quality of the leather affects all the above. Italian leather is famous to excel at this, by selecting best materials, tanning and handcrafting leathers with ancient traditions remained unaltered as unaltered is the final result.

With more than two generations expertise in creating harnesses for turnouts and restoring period carriages, Moirano is the lead brand for equestrian equipment, saddles and fine harness for horses.
See also Crazy Horse Tack.