The first thing to ascertain is the freedom from wither pressure; the hand must readily find admission beneath the Numnah over the top and along both sides of the withers. to increase the severity of the test, the man should lean forward, and the examiner must not be satisfied with anything less than the introduction of the entire hand.

Test for blade bone pressure
The next thing is to ascertain freedom from blade bone pressure. This is done by passing the hand beneath the Numnah to the play of the shoulder; if there is pressure it is only with difficulty it can be introduced. Assuming the hand can find its way in, the foreleg is advanced by an assistant (Figure 34) to its full extent, and this should be possible without pinching fingers of the examiner behind the blade bone side bar, even with the man leaning forward. If the fingers are pinched the blade bone will also be pinched, and the saddle must be raised by placing either a pair of numnah panels on the side bar or an extra fold of blanket. Both blade bones are, of course, tested.

Assuming we have remedied all the above defects, the saddle should be ridden in, say, for half an hour, and the next step is to ascertain whether the pressure of the side bars is evenly distributed; this can be learned in the following way:

Ungirth
The saddle is carefully ungirthed, the numnah straps unbuckled, and the tree lifted from the blanket without in the least disturbing it. The blanket will be found to bear the imprint of the side bars, and an examination of this depression shows at a glance whether they are pressing evenly from top to bottom and from front to rear. The examination has to be rapidly made, as the blanket through its elasticity soon loses the impression of the side bars and the mark of the latter becomes obliterated.