Saddle Shopping: Oh Crap

Our "before" confo shots.  That neck makes me cringe a little inside.

I knew my saddle wasn't a great fit for Peebs and have been planning on getting a new (or more likely a new-to-me) saddle in a year or so.  I figure his topline was going to develop more and he'd fill out a bit and why fit him for a saddle now when it could all change. 

I'm pretty sure there isn't supposed to be daylight between my saddle and his back

But over the last couple weeks Peebs has started being different under saddle.  He's a bit lazier than normal, wants to stop more, and every time I went to pick up my reins from a walk break he'd stretch his head down and put out a front leg like he was going to rub his head on his leg.  But he wouldn't rub; he'd just stretch down and not want to go forward. The first couple times he did it I thought he was complaining about his boots so I took them off and used polos.  And he still did it so off came the polos and he went with naked legs.  And he still did it. I might not know this horse well yet, but I could at least figure out something was wrong.

Peeb's wither tacing

One of the other boarders in the barn has a good friend who is a saddle fitter at Pelham Saddlery and directed me to her.  I sent in some confo shots, and tried my hand at wither tracings, so she could get an idea of what we would need to be looking for in a saddle.  Other boarder is having a local saddle fitter out this weekend to look and and reflock one of her saddles so I signed us up for an appointment with her as well.  Other than I know that my saddle doesn't fit, I'm not exactly sure what I should be looking at/for.  Luckily for now my BO has a saddle that fits better, but still not great, that we can use and while I've only used it twice, he hasn't done the head/necking stretching thing.