# Backcinches and trails



## knickerb (Apr 22, 2010)

SorrelHorse,

A danger when ridding trails with a loose rear cinch is impaling the horse if your rear cinch catches on something as you go over it. When I ride trail with a rear cinch I keep it cinched up the same tightness as I use with my own belt.

Ben


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## Fowl Play (Sep 22, 2009)

knickerb said:


> SorrelHorse,
> 
> A danger when ridding trails with a loose rear cinch is impaling the horse if your rear cinch catches on something as you go over it. When I ride trail with a rear cinch I keep it cinched up the same tightness as I use with my own belt.
> 
> Ben


This is the same philosophy my instructor uses. The saddle I'm using has one and I was asking questions and she said for arena work, loose enough to fit a fist under, but for trails she likes it to touch, not be tight, but touch the belly.


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## Mingiz (Jan 29, 2009)

If properly fitted the rear cinch should be maybe 2 fingers. Loose enough to allow for the horse to breath. Anymore than that could be trouble. To loose a foot can hang up in it or as the op was saying things getting stuck in it...


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## Trails (Jan 28, 2009)

I alway use my flank cinch on the trail. We've got some pretty steep terrain in the Cascades and I like the security it offers. 

In regards to how tight - I'm in complete agreement with Fowl Play's instructor. Snug but not tight.


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## Painted Horse (Dec 29, 2006)

I ride in some rough country also, Never had a problem with my flank cinch


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

I never use a back cinch on trails, and believe me I've ridden some pretty rough country. If the saddle fits correctly, even in really, really steep terrain you shouldn't need one. The only case where I have ever considered having need of it was on an appy I rode for a while that was mutton withered - in the end I put a crupper on and that solved the problem. I don't know why, I don't have a great valid reason, I just really don't like flank cinches, never have.


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## Allison Finch (Oct 21, 2009)

I used to guide pack trips in the West Elk Wilderness in Colorado. ALL our saddles had back cinches. On steep terrain, going down hill, they will keep the saddle from riding forward as much.
One hint though....make sure the rear cinch is tethered to the front cinch. I rode up a steep hill with one not tied to the other. The rear cinch slipped back into the flank. I was suddenly on a major bucking bronco in a very bad place!!

Some of the terrain we would ride;



















The scree fields










This was my prelim event mare. She could pack elk too


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

knickerb said:


> SorrelHorse,
> 
> A danger when ridding trails with a loose rear cinch is impaling the horse if your rear cinch catches on something as you go over it. When I ride trail with a rear cinch I keep it cinched up the same tightness as I use with my own belt.
> 
> Ben


I agree. I like to use a back cinch, but keep it snug; And one should be aware of it being there as you go through various brush and trees. Just like driving a veicle. When you have a trailor behind, you need to readjust where you go and the size of your veicle.

But things can happen, so a snug cinch is a good safety practice. Going without one is certainly okay too.

But this thread is good reminder to be careful of such things....for sure.


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

Wow! Awesome country. Tell me....I'm new to this forum; how do you get these pictures onto a thread like this? Do you just copy and paste, or what?

We have some awesome riding country here too. 'S what I live for!


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

Rawhide, welcome to the forums!

If your image is already on a hosted site, you just click the yellow icon on top of your text box that says insert image, and paste the url. If your photo is on your computer, you need to use a site to host it, like photobucket or imageshack to upload it to first, then paste the "direct link" url in the insert image box.


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## kevinshorses (Aug 15, 2009)

Allison Finch said:


> I used to guide pack trips in the West Elk Wilderness in Colorado. ALL our saddles had back cinches. On steep terrain, going down hill, they will keep the saddle from riding forward as much.
> One hint though....make sure the rear cinch is tethered to the front cinch. I rode up a steep hill with one not tied to the other. The rear cinch slipped back into the flank. I was suddenly on a major bucking bronco in a very bad place!!


You're remarkably well rounded!! I'll bet a summer in the Rockies helped your eventing mare alot. I always have ridden with a rear cinch and never had a problem but I have seen people that didn't pay attention or didn't think a rear cinch had to be snug get in some bad situations. I took a horse to ride for a guy that said he bucked whenever they saddled him and when I looked at the guys saddle he didn't have the rear cinch connected to the front cinch. That horse never bucked with me.


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

Okay, I will try that. I could probably copy and paste form facebook as well, right? I know I can on another forum. 

I'm better with horses than computers. ) Thanks.


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## kevinshorses (Aug 15, 2009)

RawhideKid said:


> Okay, I will try that. I could probably copy and paste form facebook as well, right? I know I can on another forum.
> 
> I'm better with horses than computers. ) Thanks.


I hear you there!! I should hire a trainer to teach me the internet.


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

kevinshorses said:


> I hear you there!! I should hire a trainer to teach me the internet.


Thing is I can communicate with my horse!! We get along great!


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## SorrelHorse (Apr 9, 2009)

I definately agree that it shouldn't be too tight, I ust don't have a good fitting back cinch at the moment so its a little loose. I had a friend jump over a log on her horse and she thought the cinch was tight enough but the horse puffed even after she'd walked and adjusted a few times and the horse jumped to the sid einstead of forward and got its cinch caught on a branch.

Good to ehar everyone's opinions ^^


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## kevinshorses (Aug 15, 2009)

RawhideKid said:


> Thing is I can communicate with my horse!! We get along great!


The thing about horses and computers are they may not do what we want but they usually do what we tell them.


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

kevinshorses said:


> The thing about horses and computers are they may not do what we want but they usually do what we tell them.


That's true. I'm a painter and I always tell people, "the paint only goes where you make it go. You just gotta get good at controlling where it goes!"  (just like golf)

But I was going to say.... My horses and I we see each other, talk to each other and everything, unlike my computer. I've even had dreams of my horse...and she could talk to me! Ha! Yes, in my dream she could talk! 

What can I say...I love my horses!


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## sandy2u1 (May 7, 2008)

Once while I was mounting, a piece of leather had dry-rotted and snapped and left me and the saddle on the ground . Luckily for me, we didn't have a back cinch. So the moral of this story is, if you want a back cinch, make sure the rest of your leather is in good shape and no dry-rotting :lol:


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## Allison Finch (Oct 21, 2009)

kevinshorses said:


> You're remarkably well rounded!! I'll bet a summer in the Rockies helped your eventing mare alot. I always have ridden with a rear cinch and never had a problem but I have seen people that didn't pay attention or didn't think a rear cinch had to be snug get in some bad situations. I took a horse to ride for a guy that said he bucked whenever they saddled him and when I looked at the guys saddle he didn't have the rear cinch connected to the front cinch. That horse never bucked with me.


Thank you Kevin!

yes, my show horses did a lot of things. In the fall, they would pack game out of the mountains for hunters. I had a four year old (that I had raised to be sensible) in training, that I took to pack out her first elk. I had the old vicks ready to put in her nose just in case the smell freaked her out. She walked right up to the elk, hanging in the tree, pushed it with her nose and watched it swing back and forth. I knew she would be a smack down good eventer after that....and she was.

The horses would get to a show and you could hear them think...."this is ALL I have to do?"


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## Allison Finch (Oct 21, 2009)

RawhideKid said:


> Thing is I can communicate with my horse!! We get along great!


Welcome Rawhide!!

The one thing a horse can do that a computer can not......love you back!!


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## Painted Horse (Dec 29, 2006)

You need to resize and edit your photos, then post them on a photo server. This website and most others do not provide the storage for photos. So you are just inserting a LINK to where ever you store your photos.

Most people do not want the world to have free access to their personal computers, So they store the photos on commercial photo servers. Just to suggest a couple, Photobucket, picaso, villagephotos . Basically these are online photo albums.

When you type a message, go to your photo server and get the link address. I just copy this to my clipboard. Then in your message, click on the little yellow icon that looks like a mountain with the sun rising over it. In the dialog box that appears, paste in your link address.

A coupe things to remember.
Photos from your camera will be 1 mb or larger in size. If you will resize and convert them. it makes it much faster for others to download. I thinkmost folks prefer a 800x600 sized photo. Although I usually resize mine to 1024 x 768. The larger size is ok if you have a bigger monitor, which most new flats screens are. For the older monitor, anything over 800x600 cause the reader to have to scroll right to left as they read.

Most computer screens do not display the detail that the camera can capture. So there is no need to post high res photo. When you convert your photo from the camera to a saved file. Save it as low resolution graphic file. Usually a JPG or GIF file at 72 dpi work well with most websites.

Now lets see some of your photos.


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## Trails (Jan 28, 2009)

Painted - 

You, sir, are a PC literate horseman. That was a great explanation for posting photos! Can you do the same for posting video?


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

Allison Finch said:


> Welcome Rawhide!!
> 
> The one thing a horse can do that a computer can not......love you back!!


Thanks...and exactly! 

To Painted Horse....yes, great explanation, now if I just had a mind to take it all in and make it "compute"...but I'm more like the old pinball machines...TILT! :shock:

Getting back to cinches... what about me riding with a lariet tied to the saddle, as well?! :? Thing is...is to have it tied with a leather string which will easily break. Like your chaps.


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## Allison Finch (Oct 21, 2009)

RawhideKid said:


> Thanks...and exactly!
> 
> To Painted Horse....yes, great explanation, now if I just had a mind to take it all in and make it "compute"...but I'm more like the old pinball machines...TILT! :shock:
> 
> Getting back to cinches... what about me riding with a lariet tied to the saddle, as well?! :? Thing is...is to have it tied with a leather string which will easily break. Like your chaps.


I have a saddle string special for my rope. It has a long slit at the end. I wrap it around the rope then the slit goes over the horn. It makes getting the rope free quick and easy. While I guess the rope could get caught up on something...I've never had it happen. The latigo string would break pretty easily.


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## Painted Horse (Dec 29, 2006)

Trails, I guess the answer is No.
I just haven't ventured into the world of video. My wife keeps the camcorder for videoing the kids. It's too big for me to want to pack it around while I ride or go hunting.

The video that the little point and shoot cameras produce, is coming of age and I guess there are some pretty neat new generation video cameras now available. But I haven't figured out how to take a video from horseback that doesn't seem like I bouncing all over the place. So nothing I would want to post. And watching the few seconds of video I have taken almost makes a person sea sick with all the movement.

Then I come to the size. I won't even buy a decent SLR camera. I want something that I can just slip in my shirt pocket and pull out for a quick photo. Not a camera on strap bouncing on my chest as I trot thru the woods. In fact I just hate to wear my Binos around my neck during hunting season for this reason. So I just have not taken the time to practice with posting videos.

As far as photos. I use photoshop to _Clean Up_ my photos. I always color correct and resize the photos before posting. On occassion I add a watermark with my name or crop out something distracting from the photo. Photoshop offers a "Save for Web" option. And I have not find anything that produces as small of a file as that option. I can take the same photo, If I save it on other programs it's almost always twice the size of the Photoshop Save for Web file. That's part of the reason I don't worry to much about posting 1024x768 photos vs the 800x600 size photo. Because my 1024 sized photo have a smaller file size than most others folks 800x600 files.

Here is an example.
This original photo straight from the camera was 649,412bytes in size. The original format was 1600x1200 If I upload this file directly to Photobucket and use photobucket to resize it to 800x600 I get a file that is now 162,487bytes in size.










The exact same photo, With color correction and resized to 1024x768 in Photoshop and then SAVED For WEB before being uploaded is now 59,297bytes. 








It looks better on the screen and is actually a bigger picture on the screen, It has lost a little detail. but most folks on computer screens can not see that lost detail. It's 1/10th the file size of the original photo from the camera, and 1/3 the file size of the same photo resized using Photbucket and many other photo softwares.

The point being for Rawhide and others. Start posting your photos, But experiement a little to see what software gives you the best picture and the smallest size. There is no need to go and purchase a high end photo editing software. There are many choices of mostly free software that you can use. Find the one that is easy for you to use and gives the best compression. If you use the standard offered by photo servers suck as Photobucket. nobody is going to complain. Because that is the accepted standard. But there are products that offer better performance if you look around.

I keep the high resolution originals on my computer in case I ever want to print out a high res photo or use them in a magazine article. But for websites ( such as this one) on the internet. Low res works great. Saves folks down load time, and doesn't take up as much space on the photo servers you chose to store you photos on. At some point the photo servers will charge to you excess storage space or download bandwidth. So using lower res photos that take up less storage space will help you avoid those cost.


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## Painted Horse (Dec 29, 2006)

As far as carrying a lariat on my saddle. I found after roping a 4 point deer and watching him run off with my rope because he wouldn't stand still for me to take the rope off, that it was easier to resist the temptation of being stupid, if I just didn't carry a lariat. I rarely work cows. So I don't need a lariat with me. I do carry my lead rope coiled up and hooked on a leather throng over my saddle horn. See photo.








Never had a problem with the rope catching on anythng. I have occassionally got the butt of a rifle that was in a scabbard, caught on a tree when the horse brushed too close to trees as we bushwacked.

I do use the rear or flank cinch. Mostly to keep the saddle from popping up in the back when I descend down something steep. I don't like getting launched over the horses head on steep slopes. I often hang my hobbles off the back saddle ring where the rear cinch attaches. I just feed the hobble strap through the ring and then thru the hobble buckle and let it hang on the side of the horse. When I get to lunch spot, I pull it off and hobble the horse, pull the bridle and let the horse graze while I eat lunch.

Hobbled horses grazing while we eat


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## Allison Finch (Oct 21, 2009)

Lovely photos. Thanks for sharing.


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## RawhideKid (May 10, 2010)

*Livin the Dream!*

This is an awesome forum. So much input and info on all aspects of riding. I love all the tips for safe trail riding. 

Wow! you guys are living the dream! All the camping and riding... it's all I want to do. I'm looking forward to some long rides and some over-nighters for sure.


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