I am mostly trail riding my haflinger now and was thinking of switching to a hackamore. I have him in a snaffle for ring work which he listens to and rode him in a gag with the snaffle when we fox hunted as he got a little hot. Now since we mostly trail ride I was thinking of using a short shanked hackamore like the Herm Sprenger. Has anyone used it and if so, how did you transition over? How is the braking power if you needed it?
I do a fair bit of riding bitless. I just test it out in a controlled environment to see how they react, but most seem to react very well. A short shanked hack adds the element of leverage/curb pressure, so that would be the thing that would be new to your horse by the sounds of it; your horse is used to nose pressure and poll pressure from being led. I prefer a sidepull as it is more like the familiar pressure of a halter.
Our horses all go in s-hacks. To start, I made sure the horse had a basic neck rein in whatever bit they started in and that they needed minimal contact in general. To transition, I rode the horse in a familiar, controlled environment to get them used to the feel of the hack and make sure the rein cues were understood. None of mine took long at all to figure it out.
I have unfortunately been in a panic situation using one. Loose dogs jumped out of some bushes and went after my reactive gelding out on trail and actually drew blood (which I didn’t realize until afterwards). He got in about 3 bolting strides before I realized what was happening, but I was able to get him slowed and turned without too much effort (much better than I expected at the time, truthfully).
I used a mechanical hackamore a lot as a teen and liked it. I had already put a very good neck rein on horse and hackamore added a whoa. She ended up very handy, could do lots of reining moves.
I have used both a sidepull and a hackamore on current horse. She is more English trained and I actually prefer the sidepull as it gives you options for an emergency stop with a pulley rein or small circle. The mechanical hackamore much less so, and while it is a very strong bit when fully applied I feel that if maresy decided to run through it i’d have no options. I also watched a beginner friend start to develop a bit of a rearing problem on her horse because she was a bit snatchy with her hands.
So I no longer think they are the total answer to everything.
Big drawback to sidepull is once horse drops head to graze you have nothing to pull against to stop her. So if you are riding in talk grass with a naughty pony type, you may need more than a sidepull!
