Learning not to fear the fall...

I do kind of live life on the wild side once in a while.

The first time I ever rode Bronwyn bareback, she had been off for about two months. I had never ridden her bareback and it had been YEARS since I had ridden ANY horse bareback... but I thought to myself "Oh, why the heck not?" - the last time I had ridden her, we had parted ways unexpectedly due to the sudden levitation of a cat into an apple tree. I don't know what made me think it was a good idea to climb on without riding in a saddle first, but I did, and I was pretty dang proud of the two of us by the end of that ride:



As a side note, prior to the fall that I had prior to that picture, my last fall was ELEVEN years before. As you can tell, I have lucked out. It is easy for me to say "FACE YOUR FEARS!" and encourage people to ride and not worry about falling off - when I know there are those out there who have had serious injuries to their backs, their pelvises, their heads, etc, that don't find it that easy.

Anyways, all of this to say that I have gotten a little cocky. My little mare can be taken out pretty fresh and we can go for a jaunt without a bridle OR saddle now:



I kind of knew I was riding on borrowed luck from the first go round, which is why it didn't REALLY surprise me when I accomplished fall #3 from Bronwyn's back in a beautifully epic, but sadly unwitnessed front flip over her shoulder into the snow when I decided I HAD to ride my fresh mare who hadn't been turned out in about 12 hours, who had not been ridden in about two weeks in the fluffy snow that was falling. Did I mention I was wearing a horse-eating winter jacket that makes noise when you move around? No? Well, I was.

I also neglected to longe her prior to riding, and to bother with a bridle - I just had my rope reins attached to her halter. I was pretty much asking for it.

She was a little sticky about standing still while I mounted up, which is not very typical for this big beast. I eventually did find a low enough spot to stand her in to get my leg swung up over her but before I could get it all the way over and get myself settled onto her back, she started moving off - I was essentially laying on my stomach along her spine. When she veered left, I went right and landed on my back in the snow, laughing just a little bit.

I have kind of tried to take the attitude that "If I fall, I fall..." all along but that doesn't make falling too awesome. Fortunately, Bronwyn is also still of the mindset that I SHOULD be on her back, not on the ground, so she is always surprised when I land there and hasn't mastered the art of trying to GET me there. It's kind of cute how she is like "MOM! WHY are you on the ground?!??!?!?! *horrified look*"

Anyways... I'm doing alright this morning - my neck is a little stiff from the lash as I always try to protect my helmet from hitting the ground when I fall (awesome, right? LOL) and get a little bit of whiplash.

I managed to get back on after I fell (though I was pretty shaken up) and we had a nice little jaunt around the pasture just like we had intended originally. I wasn't afraid of falling again, because I managed to get out of that one...

But I am curious - those of you who have been hurt in a fall (broken bones, bedrest, hospital stay resulting, etc), how do you muster up the courage to get back on? In my lifetime with horses, I have never broken a bone or had a concussion or anything to that effect (knock on wood), but if I did, I am not sure I would still be brave. Let's talk about it in the comments!

I hate saddles!

There has been a lot of discussion about saddles on the forum lately - the good, the bad, the ugly. One of the lovely ladies on the forum said "I love saddles!" - and all I could think was "I HATE saddles!".

Yeah, I do hate them. Right now, anyway. I am on saddle three, on an extremely limited budget, and trying to find something that fits both my big butt and long inseam as well as Bronwyn's mountainous withers and broad-as-a-coffee-table back has been a challenge that frustrates me. I've almost decided to give up on saddles altogether. I have been posting this photo around the internet and telling people I give up - I am just going to live in the woods with my horse and braid sticks into her mane and ride her around with no tack whatsoever and go wherever she wants, whenever she wants and completely forget about the concept of schooling or competing with her.

Honestly, I feel like my lack of a saddle that we feel comfortable in together has been a huge block to me getting any work done with her. I would say her training has really not progressed more than a step or two this summer due to a combined lack of time to invest into it and also the fact that when I do ride, I am scared to put any real significant amount of time on her, or to do anything strenous for fear of hurting her because of poor saddle fit. I can't work on my position because the saddles I have had don't allow me to get my leg under me. It's overall uncomfortable.

I have taken to riding bareback, primarily. I enjoy it - I look forward to it - probably because I am so uncomfortable in the saddle. I have ridden Bronwyn herself bareback more often in the last two years than I ever rode all of the horses I ever owned and rode in my childhood previous to Bronwyn put together. It's just comfortable that way.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't LIKE to find a saddle that I love. I'd love to find something that will change my mind. Unfortunately, the tack "scene" in our region is not the same as in other places. Sure, you can find lots of 18 or 19" seats... and you can once in a while find a reasonably priced "broadback" style saddle (though never seem to be as wide as Bronwyn needs!), but you rarely find something that fits both her AND I in one saddle in one place, anywhere near me, and in my price range. I can't go to a tack shop and sit in a variety of brand name saddles to see what fits me best or take something home from the consignment shop for a seven day trial. I will have no choice but to buy something from "away" and risk it not fitting, and pay the shipping both ways if it doesn't... IF there is a return option. I am just scared of making a mistake that I can't afford.

I want to put my pennies together and buy something great, designed for a broad backed horse with a seat to fit my butt but it seems like that is a long way in the future at the rate I am going now. I will bide my time, watch eBay, collect pennies out of the washing machine and eventually, I know I will own something that I will love.

In the meantime, you can find me in that treeline behind my roundpen, weaving alder branches into Bronwyn's mane!

Some housekeeping...

A few things happening right now!

You can now access the blog simply by typing www.afatgirlafathorse.com - it will bring you right to this page. :)

Also, I changed the layout. Tell me what you think? I like that it is now streamlined with the forum and I have freed up a little space on one side to put some relevant advertising. I would love to be able to do some more contests and giveaways but, as the blog points out, I have three horses, so we all know with those, cash isn't always around. :) I will be straightforward and say that there WILL be some advertising on that side, but I will work my best to make it relevant (horse related and in most instances, companies that handle products and services relevant to plus sized riders) and attractive - and no more of those gross Google AdSense ads!

Another thing that I am really interested in doing is reviews of products that are useful to us, as plus sized riders - so don't be surprised if you see some of those.

This month marks the one year anniversary since I started writing this blog and I am hoping to have some fun on the Forum over the next couple of weeks.

Also! We are running a secret santa gift exchange and Christmas card exchange on the forum if anyone is interested - last call for submissions for that stuff is on Monday, the 15th.

And we are really looking forward to some "Winter Workshops" - I haven't ironed out the details of how they will actually be rolled out, but we are planning to pick topics to learn about and hammer down to learn lots of new stuff during the winter season when riding time and daylight is more limited.

Thanks for sticking around for the ride! :)

Proof that it's not always pretty and wonderful...

For once, I am not bragging on Bronwyn!

I think sometimes I might put off the idea that Bronwyn is perfect and our relationship is without flaws, and if I do, I'm sorry - because I could have driven her somewhere and dropped her off for someone else to deal with this weekend! Despite my frustration, though, I learned a lesson or two - it seems when I am the most frustrated with her, I learn new lessons if I allow myself to calm down and consider the situation.

BUT before I get into the details, I wanted to make a big brag on my colt, Rex. For those who don't remember my colt, Rex, here is a picture of us from this summer:

I do have some pretty photographer photos of him from my friend, Jilly, but I try not to post them so much because when I do, I get abduction promises - most of the time, I wish people would just follow through, lol - I can't stand the disappointment when everyone threatens to steal him and then nobody shows up with a trailer! Haha. Probably best to show him in his "natural state" - aka dirty, and with a mane that I have set out to pull several times but never finished completely - note the different lengths along his mane. He is a son of my Angel, and a half sibling to my mare, Ari.

Anyways - Rex has never left the farm (remember, until this summer, we hadn't had a trailer in a long, long time!) - I think I might have loaded him onto a trailer once when we had borrowed a friend's to haul a horse to the vet lab but it was an open stock trailer. We planned to fill our trailer with 36 bales of square hay for temporary storage so before we did that, I wanted to take advantage of the trailer hooked to the truck and load him a couple of times. He never hesitated at the ramp, but did at getting all the way in a time or two - but without too much coaxing or cajoling, he was soon jumping right in like "what else is new?!" - I think he is going to be a fantastic trail gelding... *cough* once I get around to getting him started.

So my bragworthy horse this weekend was Rex. Not Bronwyn. Not by a long shot.

We have been trying to slowly integrate our new mare, Robin, into our herd. She is in foal and we are VERY excited about the baby so want to take things as carefully as we can. To say that Bronwyn has been less than accomodating about the new addition to the herd is an understatement. I firmly believe her obnoxious insistence on segregating her herd from anything or anybody potentially harmful (and yes, she will sometimes herd them away from me if I am trying to catch one of the other horses) stems directly from never having held a position of "importance" in a herd before. She isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the "alpha" mare in our herd, but she likes to think she is, and takes it upon herself to do the things that Jessie (the REAL alpha in our herd) is too smart to expend the energy on when she can send her goon, Bronwyn, to do it instead.

After an excitable morning of some "faux alpha mare drama rama", I went out to catch the mares to come in for the evening - I was down with a cold that, while it didn't knock me flat on my back, did make me pretty draggy most of the weekend and I had had a long day of cleaning up and doing pre-winter chores. Though the mares were close, none of them wanted to come in so I started the task of collecting them one by one. I always start with Bronwyn because of her aforementioned tendancy to herd the other horses away from me. She was not always (and still isn't) an "easy" catch but I can usually track her down within two or three minutes with Julie Goodnight's method, slightly modified.

So I started to track her down the way I typically do - assertive forward motion toward her shoulder, steady, even pursuit. Bronwyn doesn't typically do the stopping and looking at me at all until she is completely done and ready - I can then approach her and halter her, etc. Instead of her walking or trotting away from me, I was met with a lot of this:




In all seriousness, I was out there for about 30 minutes, with THIS going on. Here's the kicker - I figured out "the big amazing lesson that Bronwyn has to teach me" about 29 minutes into it.

The more she moved, the more agitated I got - while my BODY was still doing the right thing (steady, consistent approach), my BRAIN was going "that HORSE... when I get my hands on her... I should work the CRAP out of her because she's working the crap out of me!" (and on and on, as it goes). You're right, that's a big fat dose of PRIDE going on there. The more angry I got, the more wound up she got, even though my body didn't change what it was doing fundamentally. I am willing to bet that the energy I was giving off STANK to the high heavens.

Finally, I checked myself and said "Wait a minute. What was that 'golden rule' my parents taught me? Ah, that's right - 'never take your emotions into the saddle'." While I am pretty good at not carrying emotions INTO the saddle, I sometimes develop emotions while I am in the saddle, and I am not known to void myself of emotions when doing ground work. There are a lot of things I have been super patient about with Bronwyn, but then there are some things (like the battle we had in August over trimming her ears that I was too embarrassed to post about because I was being a horrible, horrible person and knew so many of you would call me for letting my emotions get the best of me) that I just decide to prove my point over my hurt feelings and don't stop until I've made that point, regardless of the cost.

This was one of those times. I was going to chase her until she fell over from exhaustion unless she stopped and let me catch her. One way or the other, as I told my father, "She is GOING TO BE CAUGHT. DO NOT let her run in the barn!". Once I realized what I was doing (I would suspect instead of the typical approach, she was feeling me more like a heat seeking missile that wanted to decapitate her), I straightened up, dropped the 'tude, and guess what? 30 seconds after I dropped the emotions out of it, she let me catch her.

Humbled once again by a horse, of course.

Fall Colours Classic Country Trail Ride - October 23rd, 2010

One of my friends from the draft under saddle club that I am involved with contacted the group that had gone on OUR club's first trail ride a few weeks ago to see if we were interested on going on the "Fall Colours Classic Country Trail Ride"...

Let me say that I have no perception. I could be standing in line for something for an hour and think I have only been there ten minutes if I don't have a clock to look at or vice versa. I also have no concept of what a mile looks like or feels like to travel nor could I appropriately guesstimate something at an inch or a foot or a yard. So, being told that the ride was 18km meant little to nothing to me. There were no warning signs that said "Do not attempt this if your horse is not in top shape!" nor were there any "don't forget your seat saver!" memos sent out. What I read said it would take 2-3 hours.

I guess I wasn't sure what to expect - on our ride before, we had gone as a group (there were only nine of us) and with the exception of two who broke off and went ahead, we stayed together the whole time. The path was pretty obvious and we had someone leading who knew where they were going.

At this ride, we left in groups (it felt kind of like The Amazing Race) after being prepped in the house and given a map. As we tacked up and were ready, groups left together. I rode with the friend who had invited me, one of my mom's clients, and another girl that had come on our draft ride - there were a couple of others - we were six in all.

Bearing in mind that this was only Bronwyn's second group trail ride ever, we set off single file into some tight woods. It was all pretty good - helmets are good for things besides protecting your head in a fall - they are also very excellent protectors against bushes and branches whipping you in the head... if you can put your face down in time!

We were warned that there was 'some water' on the trail... there turned out to be quite a few large puddles (would have been perfect for mudding on an ATV!) and a wee bit of running water. If I had been riding any one of the many stock horses I grew up riding, I would have still been back at the beginning of the ride trying to work through them but fortunately, Bronwyn doesn't seem to have much of a problem with water so she plowed through - in fact, I am surprised she didn't have gills and flippers when we got back!

We were also told that the trail actually tracked out at 15km. Our small group of six were overtaken by another group that passed us and with them, we lost our other draft club girl and her friend she had brought along so it was just my mom's client on her QH, her sister also on a QH and my friend on her Newfoundland pony for the majority of the ride.



We took a wrong turn SOMEWHERE and ended up on trail for about 4 hours. I am willing to bet we traveled 18km (or more) and we were all so sore on our bums that we were riding in two point position or (my personal favourite and my invention) the "dead man carry" in which I basically laid over my horse's neck to relieve the pressure on my bum. I also went about 1/4 of the ride with my feet out of the stirrups because my knees hurt and at some points sitting with my bum tucked under and my knees up by the pommel of the saddle like a jockey just to get them moving. There were also a few one-handed back stretches to try and keep my body functioning.

Despite my best efforts, when I dismounted, I was in a permanent crouching position and straightening to walk was pretty painful. Fortunately, when we got back to the house, they had waited for us to eat and we were plied with delicious chilli, salad and CAKE!



(The frosting was delicious!)

Overall, it was great exposure for Bronwyn. We walked the entire trail so while I am sure it was a strain on her, she seemed fine this morning and I am reasonably sure that I am the one who got the majority of the stiffness this morning. She went through lots of water, into some tight spots, heard gunshots, traveled close with other horses, through varied terrain - up hills and down, and overall, despite a couple of I-can't-believe-you-can't-just-trot-and-still-pay-attention-to-me moments, we had a wonderful experience and will, no doubt, return for next year's rendition!

Two weeks worth of updates!

You are all going to get Internet cookies at the end of this because this run down of the last two weeks is going to be a long one!

Just give me a minute here, I need to mentally rewind... (that high pitched noise you hear is me rewinding my memory like an old fashioned VCR).

So rewind back to September 17th. I had vacation planned because my birthday was coming up (Monday, the 20th... a whole quarter of a century old, ack!), but things got waylaid earlier in the week when my sister's heart dog (German Shepherd with past issues of neglect and aggression that we have spent hundreds of dollars and hours trying to fix) had a lapse in her "good dog" behaviour that had been pretty consistent for about eight months, and attacked my sister's 17 pound miniature Australian shepherd. If the aggression had always stayed with outside dogs, we could have managed this, but unfortunately, when it happens within your 'pack', it is way more difficult - this was the third time we had had such an incident and unfortunately, my 17 year old sister had to make the completely unselfish decision to put her "Boodleschnitzel" to sleep.

I have mentioned here before how amazing and awesome and wonderful that I think my sister is, but I should mention it again. Everything inside of her was screaming that she couldn't live without Bella but her common sense won over and she made a difficult decision. Bella was put to sleep on the farm with Shay and I holding her tightly and telling her what a good dog she was. I still get teary thinking of it!

Bella spent her last morning romping in our back field with her two best friends, Psyche (Shay's border collie) and Morrie (my 35lb mini Aussie). Here is a picture that I snapped of Shay with Bella and Psyche that morning:



I am so incredibly proud of her for making the right decision, even though it wasn't easy and it was breaking her heart. Bella's remains came home this past weekend (we had her cremated) and I think Shay is doing really well coping with a big German Shepherd sized hole in our household. She knows she did everything she could and we had well and truly exhausted all of our options over the last three years.


The next day, Shay took off for an agility trial she had planned - while all she really wanted to do was curl up and grieve, mom insisted it would be a better idea for her to go with Psyche to run agility and try to take her mind off of things. I would have loved to have been with her, but we had already planned (months ago!) the very first event for our local "Draft Under Saddle" club - a trail ride and potluck!

There was some road riding (about 1km at each end of the trail) that worried me a little bit, but I have to say that Bronwyn surprised me as she always does and took to it like an old pro. We rode at the back, we rode mid pack and we rode at the front, and even were overtaken by a group of motorcycles at which point - I was bracing for it to hurt, Bronwyn didn't even bat an eyelash!




You can see the rest of the album on my Facebook here.

We had a complete blast - Bronwyn was actually one of the smallest horses there, and got made fun of for her small hoof size and the fact that though I am 6' tall, I had to look UP at a lot of the riders, haha - with the exception of the Newfoundland Pony and Standardbred that were with us!

Overall, I was so proud of Bronwyn. She had her first opportunity to really ride on the road, in a group, be overtaken by traffic, ride close, through a deep wood, and stand tied to a trailer, and she took everything in stride. It has started to occur to me that "Hey, I have a fun little horse that I can take places and not worry too much about!".

That Monday, the 20th (my birthday), my father had his long awaited surgery for his torn rotator cuff (he tore it back on June 22nd and worker's comp has been trying to get things back in shape via PT - when it became obvious that it couldn't be done that way, they scheduled the surgery). All along, he had been doing things in the barn as well as he could with about 1.5 arm's worth of value... since the surgery, he is up in a sling, so one armed. Things got a little crazy with getting up at 6 to get chores done then getting home around 7:30pm and doing chores and all that silliness. I rode Bronwyn a grand total of maybe three times during the week and once it was more or less in the dark, and then we fast forward to this past weekend - Bronwyn's first show under saddle!

This marked a first for me, too - which is hauling a horse. I have traveled with many a hauler in my lifetime, and ridden enough miles in the passenger seat with a horse trailer behind to have a pretty good grasp of how you are supposed to drive with a horse in the trailer... but it certainly is different when you have your baby behind you! Dad came along with me for moral support but due to his surgery, but could not drive (though he did take his sling off and back me out of a sticky hole I had driven into when we were ready to leave)... it was really helpful to have him along because, well, I am a chronic worrier. I hear a tiny bit of movement or feel it and I am freaking. It was nice to have dad along to kind of go "that's okay, she is just readjusting after this turn".

Bronwyn is truly becoming an old pro at this trailering thing. She loads up pretty quickly - the only thing I don't like is that I can't get into the compartment ahead of her and make her back down slowly - we remedied that by removing the chest bumper when I am ready to unload (ours were just bars so we replaced it with rope, bolts, and a pool noodle. It won't stop her if we were to stop hard, hard, hard, but it's a nice soft place for her to balance) and I walk back with her telling her to be easy.

Anyways, I am getting off on a tangent! THE SHOW!

It was held at Callandar Hall Equestrian and organized by a really fantastic gal named Leah who was super, super helpful and really supportive to me. Their fall training show, she told me, is the biggest event of the year for some of their students, so I was pleased to be able to take part in it. She somehow convinced me to enter something called "pole equitation", which... well, I had no idea what it is and Bronwyn had never seen ground poles, so... total cinch, right? We went over a ground pole in the indoor arena while warming up a couple of times and that went alright, then went up to the main ring.

Surprise! They were between standards... like real, actual jumps - just with the bars all knocked. Oh my!

The first pole... well, I don't have a video of that, but she clipped it with her front hooves, I think, and rolled it up her back legs and then took a big jump and scared herself (and me, a little). I told Leah "I don't know if we can do this". Eventually, we worked through things but not before she did what one of my Facebook fans called the "politest refusal ever":



The actual class looked like this:



We were only two in the class and I won it - but I think it's mostly only because the little girl I was against had a hard time remembering the pattern. :)

We then participated in green horse w/t - which, well... let's say Bronwyn was more green than the other horse in the class (!), and then an intermediate rider w/t/c. Bronwyn had pretty much lost her mind in the green horse w/t class (rushy, pushy, and ignoring many of my aids), so I was riding very... um... proactively and aggressively in the w/t/c class and it's hard to have good equitation when you're having trouble with your horse! When they asked for the canter, she picked up the wrong lead (for the first time, ever - seriously), and the three good strides she got at the correct lead were, fortunately, right in front of the judge. I placed 5th/6, and I kind of feel like it might have been a pity placing so I didn't feel like I got horribly beaten by every child in the class.

From pictures, I recognize I need to get my hands up out of my crotch!







And the good one - mid poop!

Guest Blog: Fuller Fillies

We’re just back from the ‘good old US of A’ having had a month long tour taking in business and pleasure and the thing that always strikes me when I’m there is the difference between the English Trade and the American/Canadian Trade; the Consumers are pretty much the same the world over- yes their tastes differ but largely (no pun) they are happy if they can buy flattering, comfortable clothing at a good price- but the Trade is a whole different ball game!

I have recently been recalling our rise to fame in the UK to see if I can apply any of the learning from it to develop the US/Canadian Trade...

Many of you know the story; 39 years old coming back to riding with ‘extra padding’ led to a rather ‘tiddly’ (it was Christmas 2005) me deciding to dust down the Fashion Degree and design my own collection. Having worked in Sales, Marketing, Advertising & Business Consultancy I thought that I had all the bases covered – Hubby was a Financial Consultant which was, and remains, just as well because all I care about is how much I have to spend!

‘The bases’ were far from covered however, because neither of us had any in-depth knowledge of Manufacture which is pretty key to getting a Collection made really. But I knew a man who knew more than me and that was a good start. He arranged a meeting with a team of other men which should have set the alarm bells ringing right away... “Now then Ms (pronounced Mzzz) Wild, you are wanting to produce a range for big girls, of course this will have to be done at a premium because bigger clothing is a different ball game because it means more stitching and we have to pay someone to do that stitching!” I considered this for a moment... “Exactly how many more stitches are we talking here?” “Oh probably 100 or so...” “...which takes approximately 1 second to do on a machine...?” I continued; anyway, needless to say that I decided they had just spotted a chance to make a quick buck and with no intention of bringing out a premium-cost Brand I showed them the door.

Following much research the launch collection went into production the following year and we stood at the UK Trade show, BETA. I was amazed at how many people told me how ‘risqué’ they thought the idea was – let’s be clear here – not ‘risky’...‘risqué’. Apparently, talking about big bottoms and boobs amounts to something close to Swedish porn which clearly should be kept in brown paper bags (you understand I have no personal knowledge of what I’m talking about here...) Anyway, I have what we call a ‘warped sense of humour’ and had this thought ‘I’ll show them risqué!”

The next month I launched the ‘nude filly’ advertising campaign. A whole raft of ads with my size 20 model wearing nothing but her hat and boots and the caption ‘2 million riders had nothing to wear – until now’ – all done very tastefully you understand!

The response from the rest of the Industry (our ‘competitors’) was nearing hysteria. The best was when I got a call from an Irish magazine, “Suzanne, if I offered you a full page ad. For £30 would you be interested?” Of course the answer was yes and I had to ask why; “Well a certain Brand has just pulled their advert because they don’t want to be seen next to your ad – apparently he knows fat girls exist but doesn’t want to see them with no clothes on”. What the owner of this very high-profile brand didn’t know was that the Editor was a size 22 and took his remarks VERY personally! It transpired there were many plus-sized Editors working in the industry so we got a fair amount of publicity with that nude plastered in every magazine the length and breadth of the country. It was most certainly different – but hell it worked!

There is one difference between British and US/Canadian consumers and it surrounds the horses you ride; over here if you weigh more than 11 stone you are expected to ride a Draught Horse – riding a pony or thoroughbred could get you lynched! My ‘Fluffy Lillies’ got very excited over a letter in the BHS magazine one month, a lady had written in saying she would love to ride her Fell pony but, at a size 22 couldn’t find clothing to fit her – why were her needs different to her skinny friends? The response had been deafening; how dare this fat b***h ride a pony – didn’t she care about its welfare? Big women were a burden to the tax payer because if they fell off their horses they would need an air ambulance to take them to hospital – I could go on!

The Editor who, it has to be said, has a fondness for well-padded ladies, offered me the right to reply on behalf of XLovely ladies everywhere – and I did. Three pages. Suddenly, big women had a voice and the mail bag was over-spilling for the next 6 months. You can’t buy publicity like that. The magazine had seen nothing like it , which is pretty much the definition of different...
Fuller Fillies became recognised as the authority on the subject of plus-sized clothing in the UK and I have always been the first to defend the needs of my Fluffy Lillies – and I expected it all to start over when we accidentally launched in the USA. What a difference!

Yes, its true, the USA was accidental. OK, it was in the plan for sometime in 2011 however, in January 2008 I got a call from an American lady buyer asking if we were standing at BETA the following month; we weren’t but arranged to meet to discuss the Collection, at the venue. When she arrived with her CEO she brought the proofs of their next catalogue which had half a page of our product already in there – the easiest sale I ever made!

The lady was from SmartPak, by the next catalogue we had two pages and by the next they had become our Wholesale Distributor; a whole different project for them. This is what brought us to America, and to AETA...

I bolstered myself and waited for the tirade of abuse from Retailers aghast that we were encouraging ‘fat girls to ride poor horses’. It didn’t happen – in fact far from it. “You only go up to a size 24 – what’s that in American a size 22? You need to go bigger!” And then there’s my favourite from this last AETA show when I was approached by a lady from Texas, “You got any low-rise britches?” Taken aback by the request I explained that as a plus-sized brand this would not be a good thing as it would dissect the tummy and nobody wants two tummies! “You need to make low-rise britches – they all want them.” An hour later I had established that she had not been asked for low-rise britches by anyone over a size 8 however she thought it would be a good idea – she now seems to be having all of her friends email me on a daily basis asking if we do a low-rise style. Presumably they will wear them with Riding Thongs – something else that we are never likely to produce! Some differences need to be preserved.

Bringing Fuller Fillies to market was always going to provide us with a challenge; what we didn’t realise is how different the challenges would be depending where you are in the world – and they don’t come from Consumers, rather the people who have set themselves up to service the consumer and like to think they know what they’re doing; you can rely on us Ladies but your local tack store might need some education...

Sometimes differences can be perceived that don’t exist and this brings me full circle. Since our launch we have been plagued with requests for us to do a long boot that will accommodate big calves; after 5 years of toil and an office full of ‘comedy boots’ we perfected our Dress Boot in time for AETA in January. We displayed it with pride and were told repeatedly that it wouldn’t sell over there because everyone wanted Field Boots. We hurriedly had 1000 pairs made with elastic laces and what do you know – the Dress boot is outselling the Field Boot 2:1!

At the end of the day we embrace difference; our consumers aren’t just scaled up versions of their size zero sisters – they are different; our clothing isn’t just copies of what is out there already for standard sizes, we design what our Consumers want – that’s very different. And our Consumers are the BEST whether they are in the UK, the USA, Canada or Croatia (and before you ask, yes we do sell to Croatia...) – and why? Because they are big, beautiful and oh so very different!

Viva la difference!

Written for ‘A Fat Girl & A Fat Horse’ by Suzanne Wild, Designer & Managing Director Fuller Fillies Limited. – another fat girl.
www.fuller-fillies.com