There is a time-honoured custom in the service not to remove saddles while the backs are hot, but to loosen the girth and let the back dry with the saddle on. Sometimes the saddle is taken off and merely the numnah left on, and this is the right method. Every endeavour should be made to dry backs as soon as possible. If wet backs are exposed to the air it is not uncommon for many small swellings to form, which, as a rule, go down in a few hours, but occasionally become fairly permanent and get rubbed.

Atmospheric conditions affect backs.
In some parts of the world, like South Africa, no care is taken to prevent hot and wet backs being exposed, and no harm results; but the conditions of atmosphere are very different from what is found in Europe, the air being dry and evaporation rapid. In Europe we think it is a good precautionary measure not to expose the backs until the men already to dry them.

As horses get in hard condition the sweating under the saddle becomes less until finally hardly any moisture can be seen. This is a useful guide to the hard condition of troop horses.

How to examine a sore back
Sore backs classified
Sore backs may be classified into those affecting the ridge of the back-bone, viz., the withers and spine, and those occurring on the skin covering the muscles which lie on the top of the ribs. To put it in another way, there are sore backs affecting primarily the bony structures, and others which only affect the soft parts; the former are incomparably the most severe.

A very little experience will show that sore backs appear to group themselves in certain definite positions, and these positions are not accidental but the outcome of certain definite causes. So marked is this, that with experience it is possible to tell the cause of an injury by its position on the back, and to forecast the part of the saddle which produced it.