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Is the saddle an important piece of the equation when it comes to overall horsemanship, Van?

"Yes sir, what I'm looking for in a saddle of course, you hit the nail right on the head and I want to find a top quality saddle made by a very reputable and very top quality saddle manufacturer. And the reason why is that they're generally going to work a little bit harder with the saddle tree manufacturers to make sure that all points of that saddle to be even. In other words, it's like everything else and you've got to start with a great foundation. That saddle tree is the absolute most important thing there. After that we want to make sure we're using top quality materials. The best leather possible, those are things I look for. But really what I'm looking for outside of those things, I'm looking for something that fits my task. I really have to ask myself, what am I going to be doing in my horse the most? If all I do is race, barrels and the barrel racer, then by God it might just pay for me to go find me a barrel race in the saddle as opposed to a cut and saddle. So I want to match the saddle to the task that suits my need."

Our co-host David Woodruff has Dylan DeBock from DeBock Harvesting.

So I just heard a broadcast out of Great Falls and they had the governor of the state and he'd been all up and down the eastern side of Montana and he said we need rain. It was dry last week when I was there and very few places on the plains anywhere that they've got. I think northeastern North Dakota had a little rain and maybe just about enough and there was a pocket somewhere in southwestern Kansas as I recall it. Don't know what happened but we got a crop there and they were the two oddballs. Everybody else is just crying.

"I haven't done it as long as some people but this is the driest and the thinnest wheat crop I've seen north to south. Usually we always have a hiccup in our run somewhere. Whether it be a hailstorm obviously droughts is always a big factor but usually it's just kind of contained to one state or one area but this year it's our whole run is stressed. So yeah it's one for the ages I think."

Now where was it you're from Oklahoma originally?

"Moreland area. Yeah."

Actually I was wrong about never being to Oklahoma. I have been down there. Before the bomber hit I was in Oklahoma City. Brother-in-law was working at Brahms.

"Yeah oh yeah. Yeah that's one thing we miss in North Dakota. Oh yes. We do miss our Brahms. They have all their own dairies and stuff so I mean they're vertically integrated. So yeah they only go where their trucks can get there and back in a day."

After Alva where do you go?

"We go to St. Francis, Kansas."

Custom Harvest Dylan DeBock

Here's horse trainer Becky Amio on saddle fit.

"What I was finding is I was struggling with saddle fit, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I was having a hard time with saddles going up Colt's neck, and I was also having a problem with side-to-side slip, and then I was having a problem with the seat itself on the saddle that I had been using for many years was putting me in a position that was too wide, so the access point where I could get a good hold with my legs around the barrel of the horse, it wasn't conducive to be able to support myself and support the horse. I called several different saddle makers, and a lot of them honestly didn't give me good answers or didn't want to answer my questions, and I ended up finding a saddle pad designer that helped answer my questions discussing saddle fit, because she showed me how to shim the saddle or the saddle pad to fit the saddle properly."

"From there, she directed me to a man named Mark Jones out of Georgia, and Mark was the first person to listen to me when I discussed all of the problems that I was having. I would say 98% of the saddle manufacturers out there, their general average bar spread is 13 1⁄2 inches, and that is too wide for these young Colts. That's why I was having a problem going up their neck like I was."

More from Becky Amio on our longer version of the Horseman's Corner Extended Podcast, all on horsemanscorner.com.