I have a nylon halter/bridle with matching reins. My horse once lowered his head and tried to scratch is ear with his hind foot. (I was not on him, someone else was.) He put his hind foot through the rein and freaked out when he found his hind leg attached to his mouth. The resulting panic was not pretty but fortunately the scissor snap attached to the bit let go. The resulting “rope” burn on his hind pastern left me very thankful that the damage was not far worse. I have since had the reins cut and spliced together with a leather loop. Now they should break in a similar circumstance. (In theory anyway.
I’m a trail rider, I use beta reins. With that said, that stuff is strong. I had a sponge attached to a long piece of beta/biothane materia that was hooked on the saddlel that got hung up when my sister was leading my gelding through a round pen panel gate. He started dragging that panel when it got hung up, the beta/biothane didn’t break, the snap did.
I can say that in 38 years of making Biothane, we have not heard of an instance where a horse or a person was hurt because a product made with Biothane didn’t break. Yes, Biothane is strong. It’s made to be stronger than leather. But if there was a compelling reason, like animal safety or human safety, we certainly could make it weaker.
As mentioned, we’ve seen hardware as the most common break points, but there are some other good ideas in this thread to add to the peace of mind.
YES to using the scissor snaps between the reins and the bit rings. They will spring open with pressure on them. How do I know? Horse tripped and fell in a river with me because he spooked and tried to bolt across slippery rocks. He and I went down and he left without me. I got out of the mud, sticks and water and watched him bolt off in a panic. I called him a couple of times, thinking about the 1000’s of park acres that he would be running thru. I hear him whinny and he comes running backto me. Goooood horse, whoops, no reins. No damage done to his mouth. Made a very short rein out of a sponge strap, hand it to riding friend who was on a much smaller horse (short neck) and borrow her reins to ride the 5 miles back to trailer.
SCISSOR SNAPS will open if the rein catches on something hard enough.
chicamuxen
I used the pimply soft biothane to replace the web/rubber on 2 pairs of english reins. Saddler took out the stitching on the old web and resewed the biothane to the leather bit attachments.($15) They now look like traditional reins and will break if necessary.
I just bought a pair of rope reins, and I had the vendor split them and spice them with a bit of rawhide thong. Now they will break in the event of an emergency. I feel much better too.
ETA: These are the reins I bought. Note the leather straps at the bit. You could probably add something like this to your reins.
[QUOTE=Appsolute;7622014]
What about replacing the chicago screws with some leather ties like they use on some western bridles? That way the leather tie would break (and it will break easier than a brass snap!) and you won’t have the same dangers that you have with snaps (horse rubbing head and getting stuck to something etc). And if the leather did break, it would be very easy to replace.
I am thinking something like this:
Ties[/QUOTE]
If you don’t think anything else would break…I like THIS idea!!
