Charlie Horse's 2017 Picture Thread

[Nanno]

Shelby GT is a "Cardboard Cutout Alpine"-- The skinny, long legged type.  I consider him my best pack goat.  He's 7.

Woodstock is half Alpine, half Boer, as you can see by the curly horns and floppy ears.  He's a great goat but his back is pretty short and I think I'm going to have to make him a special saddle or go with one of those sopris types.  I noticed he had swirly rubbed hair on his shoulder blades, meaning the saddle spent too much time up there.  He has an excellent personality. He's 5.

I would guess this is more a problem with Woodstock's back width and shape rather than length. Pack saddles aren't very long, but Woodstock has the rounded back and shoulders from the Boer side. That aluminum saddle is almost certainly too narrow for his back and if it's one of the ones with un-contoured, square-edged panels then it's absolutely the wrong shape. In fact, there are very few goats who would be comfortable with panels that shape and they would be goats with conformation like Shelby's. If a saddle is too narrow for your goat's back, it's going to want to slide forward onto his shoulders no matter what its length. If it has those flat aluminum panels then it's going to rub him big time. He needs a more typical wooden saddle with contoured panels and a beveled front edge. The Boer crosses usually need a more deeply contoured saddle made with wider angling in the forks, but I'm pretty sure one of your wooden saddles would still fit him better than that aluminum one.