Wintec 500

I got a brand new Wintec 500 with the interchangeable gullet system today.  It seems to be a good cheaper alternative to a Parelli saddle.  I wish I had the money for a Parelli saddle, but right now, the Wintec is what my budget can handle.  My boy is a wide guy, I joke that he is built along the lines of a foundation quarter horse, with a reaaaaaaaaaally wide sprung rib cage and a broad back.  Luckily, he is only in the large gullet, so we still have 2 wider gullets to go to if and when he bulks up more.  Its a really nice saddle, I'm quite pleased with it.  I just tested it on him a couple minutes ago, and we finally had an easy time saddling.  The other saddles didn't fit correctly, so he was really uncomfortable even having them on his back, which made saddling impossible.  But this time, I went out there, and I played the friendly game with the saddle pad, put the saddle up on his back, and stood there.  He stayed still the whole time with a nice calm expression on his face, and so I started playing with the girth.  He can get a little claustrophobic about the girth, so I did some approach and retreat with the girth.  He has an itchy spot right between his legs all the way back to his belly, so every time I put the girth up on his belly, I scratched that itchy spot.  It only took a couple times and he decided he was okay with the girth being buckled.  Keeping in mind that he gets claustrophobic really easily, I did some more approach and retreat with actually tightening the girth as well.  He did really well with it, and I was able to tighten the girth with no problems.  Now this is really important because he has had a couple of bad incidents with saddles, so I really wanted to make sure this time went well.  Once the saddle was on, all I did was stand next to him and scratch his itchy spots.  He ate some grass, and I took the saddle off.  Because he is a very young LBE, I'm trying really hard not to push him past thresholds and lose his trust, so I'm taking things pretty slow with saddling.  He is already doing some nice level 3 stuff OnLine, but I haven't actually ridden him yet.  We had a nice time OnLine too, even though he was a bit "fizzy" at first because I hadn't played with him in 3 days.  He started rearing and bucking, so we did a lot of fast things: sideways to circling to squeeze and back through.  He finally calmed down and started licking and chewing, so I slowed it down and asked for better quality of the games.  He gave me a beautiful sideways on both sides, so we moved on to Figure 8's, which he also did a beautiful job at.  All in all, it was a great day.