Baby's First Saddle

While I don't plan on actually starting Cinder under saddle for over a year, I want to expose her to things and start laying the foundation. I was worried about putting my $$$ custom saddle on her for the first few times.  I had been talking with my trainer about it, and she offered me an old child size Wintec dressage saddle she had.  Someone had given it to her years ago and she has no use for it and isn't a fan of Wintecs. She gave it to me and said she doesn't care if Cinder destroys it.

Wanting to know where the treats went

Since the saddle weighs like 3 pounds (I'm not convinced there's an actual tree in it), I figured it wouldn't hurt to start putting it on Cinder a bit. I don't have a dressage girth, and don't really want to buy one just for saddling practice, so I used the girth off of my surcingle. Cinder couldn't have cared less about the saddle or girth and was more interested in seeing if she could eat the saddle than anything. She's super mouthy right now and wants to chew on everything.

Can I eat it?

I walked her around the arena for all of 5 minutes with it on and I was more worried than she was. We tried again a few days later and same thing; she didn't care about it at all.  For her third saddling, I wanted to introduce stirrups and let them flop around but was too lazy to pull them off my saddle and put them on the Wintec. So I put my saddle on her.

Saddle pad from my barn in high school, circa 2001

Peeb's 48" girth actually almost fit. She could probably wear a 44" or 46".  We started with the stirrups up and then I dropped them and bounced them against her.  Once again, she didn't care. I'm hoping to saddle her once a week or so, gradually increasing how much I do with her and how long she's wearing it for. And if anyone has a used 44" or 46" girth for sale, let me know!