If only that were true. Even many of the books have a lot of misinformation. It’s really kind of distressing. But that’s a soapbox I really try to avoid climbing up on because nothing good ever seems to come of it. 
Signed,
Former physical science teacher, lifelong horsewoman, and bit geek.
So what does the abuse of equipment prove, exactly?
Did you want to say that this kind of bit could be used differently than it was designed? By the same token, cars can be used as lethal weapons. Yes, but so what?
IMO, one must be a “charitable reader” of an opponent’s argument, even if you are just here to trash it. Trash the strongest version or don’t bother.
Are you familiar with the bit research conducted by Dr. Hilary Clayton and colleagues? It’s fantastic research on bits. I always said if I ever won MegaMillions, I’d fund a few more years of that research.
I used to have all the related publications bookmarked, but lost them in a computer switch. I just did a quick search and found a couple of the articles available on ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228259985_Radiographic_study_of_bit_position_within_the_horse’s_oral_cavity
A Google search will turn up more info.
Nobody is fighting about physics, some people are fighting about semantics.
A book may answer the question, but physics is the reason for the answer.
The book I mentioned previously covers both English and Western bits and can be found here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bits-Bitting-Manual-William-Langdon/dp/1883714036
I’m reminded of when I had my oral examination for my masters and my outside committee member, the grand dame of physical anthropology at the time, asked me what possible use all this math had. One of my advisors was outraged and stormed out of the room after shouting “Calculus is why flowers grow!” I can only assume he was referring to fibonacci sequences. 
And THAT’S why no Western Saddles are allowed in Regular Dressage! Those damn fibonacci sequences will get you every time…
Your opinion. He is a horseman not a physics geek
I’m sorry… what?
My point was anyone can abuse or misuse any tool should they choose to do so. Doesn’t mean it was meant to be used that way.
This reminds me of my oral presentation in undergrad. My research was on chaos theory and the biology professor wanted to know what the math had to do with biology. Thankfully I knew I would get “why math”
Questions and was ready but the math and physics profs may have rolled their eyes a bit!
And I’m using that calculus quote when I teach next year!
I was wondering the same thing! The dressage shows around here feature everyone from beginner riders on school horses and Western dressage riders to Olympians riding the Grand Prix. I have have yet to ever see anyone be “snooty” about someone else’s horse, tack, or outfit at a show. Are there snooty people there? Of course! But I suspect they are snooty in all walks of their live and it has nothing to do with them being dressage riders.
Dressage and hunters both have very traditional trim and tidy gear, and both feature people riding a course alone in an arena with great precision and focus.
Our culture is uncomfortable with women who do a task with serious focus. Our culture demands that even women who are doing big important jobs keep a people pleasing smile on at all times, acknowledge, defer, demure. Our culture doesn’t have room for women that put on an unflattering helmet that hides their hair, ignore the rail birds, focus, and do a round entirely in their own bubble.
When a woman is able to get into her own space and do a job without emotionally caretaking all bystanders, men call her bitchy and women call her snooty.
If a man can do this, he’s a champ.
I admit to joking about the snootiness of dressage, good natured, when explaining it to outsiders. I’m an engineer, so there is always a discussion on shifting center of gravity, but I talk about how we are supposed to look like we’re doing nothing while controlling nearly every step, and dressage attracts a lot of type A introverts, so to go to a show you would think we are major snobs. I’ve always had that “is she stuck up or quiet?” impression, so I don’t actually think dressage riders are snobs - but I do think shows are typically the worst place to meet them! I really love most of the dressage community locally - in a far higher proportion than the general population. But I have gotten to know them away from shows.
Exactly. I don’t know why we should expect athletes in a high pressure competition to be all chatty and smiley to strangers. Lots of riders have show nerves, and lots of horses are a bit unpredictable.
Because of the guaranteed ride times, there isn’t that big lineup around the gate you can get at jumper shows. And because watching lower level tests can be like watching paint dry unless it’s a friend riding, people don’t tend to sit around and watch each other compete. I think too there is less learning experience in watching compared to someone who wants to see how a particular course rides on jumpers. And there are far fewer juniors hanging around dressage shows.
All that can make a dressage show feel less social than the equivalent h/j show, but it’s not that dressage people are inherently less friendly.
That had me laughing out loud (PhD Anthropology). Brilliant!
Oooo a kk ultra!!
WOOSH
Way off topic, for epistemology nerds only. Read at your own risk.
And you should have nailed his ass to the wall for being so reductive. Reductionism-- the effort to “reduce” or explain all phenomena in their simplest, and/or underlying causes-- seems great, especially if you are on the physics side of things… and, even better, beyond that and in pure math. I mean, you can wrap your equation-y arms around the whole world and own it! Chlorophyll or flower sex or a very complex (and evolved) symbiotic relationship between flowers and bees need not apply.
But! You lose a whole, whole lot of complexity and, frankly, useable knowledge when you do that radical “boiling down” of things. And where people are involved, as in anything “anthro”-- reductionism like “the mind is nothing but changing electron gradients in nerve cells… or calculus,” (however that works), can be merely insulting. It can be deeply damaging (e.g. "Let’s drug everyone whose electrons aren’t flowing where we want; after all, they aren’t really losing anything else, are they?) to radically unhelpful: "I want to be able to write the mathematical formula that explains the origins of Mozart’s “Magic Flute. Give me enough time and research money, and I’ll do it!”
And so, as I’m sure you knew, one needs to be a little bit of Reductionist to get Physical Anthropology started: If you are not allowed to infer bits of culture and perhaps even systems of logic from physical fragments, how can you do that science at all? But if you choose too much— all is calculus-- no one should pay anyone but a mathematician to do anything. Ergo: Screw calculus. It has its uses and it’s a lovely place to visit. But I doubt anyone would actually want to live there.
You ought to understand the argument is making before you make it.
When you pick the worst example of something-- how cars and bits can be used, Dressage, Western riding or AQHAs-- and then tell us that that’s why we shouldn’t bother with the best of those, it’s not very convincing. That’s because the “yeah-but” response of “there’s something better” is always open to your opponent.
Or one could read a book written by an “insider” to a discipline about how their bits work, rather than someone outside of it.
I know there are more modern books, but here’s a place to start:
Also, (all y’all) should be informed consumers when you look at pictures of spade bits. They should be shown on a stand, the center of the bar and port supported by a post. Like this:
http://www.eaglebrandcowboytack.com/spade_bits.html
They should not be shown lying on something like Maude’s picture (sorry, Maude), or even like this, with the post touching the bar at the bottom end of the shanks: https://www.lynescustomcowboyco.com/bits/
In fact, no part of the bit except for that central point should be touching any part of the stand.
That’s because a huge component of how the bit works is its orientation in the horse’s mouth and the shanks versus the “purchase”-- the short lengths above the mouthpiece that attach to the cheek pieces. So when the bit is hanging from that post in the center, you can see how vertical or “laid back” it wants to be when it’s in that (physics-induced) balance. And that balanced orientation is also how it will hang in the horse’s mouth; it’s the “neutral” position in there. This is way above my pay grade, but I suspect that if you were an expert horseman, you’d be able to visualize the angle of your horse’s head and mouth where, according to his conformation, you’d want it to be, and that can be influenced by all that stuff I mentioned avove-- the conformation of his poll, throat latch, neck and shoulder. That’s why you’d want to see a spade bit displayed on a stand in this particular way.
In that last link, notice how that bit maker wants to do the same thing–show you something about the shape and orientation of the mouth piece and rings-- on his snaffle bits. Again, that’s because I think this whole tradition is used to thinking of every piece of headgear for a horse as a signal device.
IMO, every rider in every discipline that influences the horse’s head is in the business of manipulating his posture via controlling the position of his very heavy head way out on the end of that stalk of a neck he has. If you tell a horse where to put his head and then tell him he can’t move it at will in order to keep his balance and you guys move around, that glorious reality of mechanics will force him to use postural strength instead in order to stay upright. The position of the head, then, doesn’t matter except for the way it influences the position of the rib cage and thoracic sling and all those muscles.
But the horsemen who are seeking to influence the horse’s head without physically pulling it into position have something going for them, IMO.’
I like learning about how other high-level horsemen conceptualize the job of teaching a horse to carry himself in that wonderful uphill balance we like and how they teach them to be responsive, willing, even help-you-out-of-a-jam partners that we all want. That’s why the bridle horse person’s understanding of a bit (and hackamore) as signal devices and how they work to touch the horse and convey requests to him is interesting to me.
Lol that’s not what I meant at all, thanks.
I have a grade quarter horse mare. Awful conformation. People at the barn (dressage barn) thought I was crazy for saying she was really good, since she moves fairly average (though better than a lot of QH) and is so downhill. Until they either ride her, or see her jump. She has a whole fan club out there now of people who have ridden her (I can’t ride much so been letting others ride her), and her jumping skills were heavily praised this past weekend by a former WEG eventer who had also previously disregarded her for her movement.
Basically, the thing about quarter horses is they often might not look like much, but they are fantastic at surprising you.
Also, OP, I know you said you aren’t going to try any more saddles, but my mare has typically preferred western saddles in the past and I use a Black Country GPD on her now which she loves. No blocks to push your leg back. She’s a semi QH bar in most western saddles and a MW in this one. Just in case you ever want to try another one and haven’t tried one of these.
Thanks for this post! The picture is not the actual bit I used, but a screenshot to show people basically what a spade is. The rabbit hole is quite deep and there is no bottom. I find it absolutely fascinating. Since I’m not dressage competition goal oriented any longer, I have enthusiastically jumped into the making of a bridle horse with both feet.
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