Not something I would have expected to be featured in the Times.
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The reporter who wrote it rides and shows, and she is usually the one who covers most things related to horses that turn up in the Times.
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Years ago I had an OTTB mare who pulled like a train. My trainer had a brilliant idea and had me try a hackamore. Her pull was not longer like a train. It was more like a 747. I almost died. Epic fail.
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My mare has always been fussy about bits. I have tried several bitless bridles and yep…that just seems to be an invite for me to carry her…yeah, no. I think a bit is much better for both of us (I did find a couple she gets along with better).
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If you tried my mare (OTTB) with the bit fit like the first picture in the article, she would be very fussy with her mouth. She likes a Dee bit with very little to no play, even a 1/4" too wide and she plays with the bit and won’t take steady contact. I have had other horses with similar reactions. I don’t consider the picture a good fit, YMMV.
I will also add, I ride with either a very loose noseband (english) or no noseband (western/trail riding) and with the correctly fitted bit she quietly takes contact, no playing with bit a tossing her head.
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She rides and shows and wrote that riders use hunks of metal jammed between the horse’s molars? Maybe her editor decided to jazz up the rhetoric. She did write gums later (in the same paragraph or the next).
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That’s a loose ring bit. They are often fitted a quarter inch “too big” to give the loose ring a little more distance from the corner of the horse’s mouth. Loose rings often pinch the skin if fitted the same as a D or egg but.
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I realize that, but it also gives, IMO, too much movement for a lot of horses and it’s a reason I don’t use them. That movement MAY contribute to so many people “needing” a flash noseband to keep their horses mouth quieter or stabilize the bit. Switch to a Dee or Eggbutt and fit it with less movement and see if the horse is quieter.
This is MY opinion and I know plenty of disagree.
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Recently I got all “let’s ride with no bit” and rode my gelding (17 years old, broke him myself as a youngster, has always been fine in a bit but also quiet enough to hop on in halter and lead rope from time to time) bitless (rope halter and reins attached kind of like a makeshift bosal). He’s great…until he decides we’re both going to die due to some epic trigger stacking and a huge excavator being unloaded right before his very eyes.
We’re going back to the bit. Screw that. I don’t want to die, LOL.
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One time I tried to ride one of my mares in my geldings hackamore thinking she might like it. Oh, she did like it. Very much so. As soon as she realized I had very little say on speed, we were off to the races!
Each horse is different and a bitless bridle can be harsher than a 3 ring gag in the wrong hands.
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With Feronia, I figured out, somewhere along the way, that the whole “dressage horses wear loose ring snaffles” was not a rule at all. She objected to the amount of “play” a loose ring had around her mouth. I went through a few iterations, but ultimately settled on an eggbutt with a fairly thin double jointed mouthpiece. Like a lot of Morgans, she has a fat tongue and not a lot of room in her mouth. I’d just started playing around with a double jointed short shanked Pelham - not for dressage - which she adored, when I had hand surgery gone bad and could no longer use double reins.
(Of course I’d started off all wrong, borrowing a friend’s thick rubber single jointed full cheek snaffle… Only finding out a little while later that she should never go in anything thick rubber, anything single jointed, or any full cheek. Whoops.)
I eventually switched to a Little S hackamore, and we had many happy trail miles. As she got older, I’d noticed that, as thin as the mouthpiece was, she couldn’t quite close her mouth on the left side when wearing the eggbutt.
Lola… Well these Morgans! She is a habitual bit chomper, and really did not like double jointed anything. She was a little noodle-y at the time, so I told the trainer I wanted to try a full cheek single jointed snaffle with keepers, and that worked well, especially without a noseband. She also was quite comfortable in the Little S, although she wanted fairly solid connection through the reins between my hands and the shanks. Her initial encounter with the Little S was amusing as she started chomping and was surprised that there was nothing to chomp on!
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Ha! The horse being jumped is doing so in a smooth wire. Not a “loose rope”.
When I was a kid if you wanted to ride on a wire you started out with a pronged wire, and moved to smooth if you could.
Back then nobody used a rope.
