I am Alison Braithwaite, I live in Suffolk and cover East Anglia for work. I joined the WOW team of fitters in summer of 2014. I had a small break for 8 months at the beginning on 2018 because of the arrival of my son, Jacob. I then came back to work part time, now with Jacob at school now (doesn’t time fly!) I am back to working more or less full time, round school hours!!

My background in horses is my mum taught me to ride when I was young and then I went to a riding school. When I was 13 yrs old I got my first horse. I did Pony Club and local competition. I started a passion for Eventing in those years and I BE Evented Pre-novice and Novice in my late teens and early 20’s with my second horse, Gordon Bennett. Within that time I spent a year out in Australia and worked for 4 months on a Show Jumping yard and when I came back to the UK I went to Writtle College and obtained BSc (Hons) Equine Studies with Science. After my degree, I sadly broke my right leg very badly in a fall which put pay to me working with horses in a yard situation and hoping to compete professionally but it took me on a different path and I started to train as a Saddler in 1999 and over the years have Qualified as a Saddler by obtaining my City and Guilds in level 3 Bridle and Saddle Making. This subsequently led onto saddle fitting and I qualified with the Society of Master Saddlers as a Qualified Saddle Fitter in 2005.

My first introduction to WOW saddles was with a home bred mare called Carrie. She was incredibly difficult to fit with a jump saddle, as she had big loaded shoulders and was very short coupled. I felt like I was always sitting to far back once I had jumped her round a course of fences. I saw WOW saddles at Burghley and had a fitter out and didn’t look back. It completely changed how I felt about jumping her. It was one of the really early WOW saddles, as it had a resin seat!