Hello!
I currently have a 5 year-old very large, very strong Quarter Horse who is being shown in reining and western dressage. He belongs to my mom, but she asks me to school him a lot for her and I show him in the hunters sometimes. In reining, he goes in a bosal. In dressage, a Baucher with a flash.
The flash is needed because he opens his mouth all. the. time. We’ve had a dentist and a vet look at him, and there’s nothing wrong- the horse just loves to open his mouth. He will stand in his pasture and stall and yawn and yawn and yawn. When you’re riding him, he does it as well; he doesn’t pull on the bit or get strong, he just opens that mouth. Since he does it all the time (even in the pasture), I don’t really think it’s bit evasion- it’s just a young horse being bored. When he has the flash on, the mouth opening totally goes away.
I was thinking about getting a cheap figure 8 to school him in with a french link dee ring so that it would keep his mouth closed (like his flash) but also distribute pressure across the nose (like his bosal). A kind of combination of the two that would keep him from crossing his jaw (which he also does sometimes) as well. There is potential that one day this horse could be a jumper, and my horse is also a jumper, so a figure 8 wouldn’t go to waste in our tack room 
What do you guys think? Would a figure 8 be good for this guy, or something else?
