Bits and bites

Two reins, one headstall, one noseband that likes to be creative...

Buckle up, folks - this one got long.

I talked a little bit with Dom in comments about bits and my thoughts on them, so I thought I might expand a little here.

The first barns I rode in, we had snaffles.  Most of them were eggbutts, and most of them were simple single-jointed mouthpieces.  The only non-snaffle I saw the first four years I was taking lessons was a grazing bit.  The harshest bit I saw was a slow twist snaffle.

To be honest, it took me a while to realize that loose-ring bits were normal. We didn't have any of those. lol

I went through a series of various English instructors after that, about half dressage (or so-called dressage) folks and about half sorta-hunter/jumper folks.  Saw a couple of pelhams and Kimberwicks, but that was about as harsh as it got.  Saw a couple of straight bar snaffles, and didn't understand that they were gentle.  Saw some loose-rings and couldn't understand why you'd buy a bit that you needed a rubber guard to keep it from pinching (and I still haven't figured out what kind of magic gets those things on - seriously, the hole is tiny and the bit ring is not...).

So what I'm saying here is: I'm pretty rooted in English bits, and relatively simple ones at that.

I also spent a lot of time reading - a lot.  And when you're reading every used book on English riding you can get your hands on, you get a lot of reinforcement of the idea that a kinder bit is the way to go. (Especially in the British books.  I swear I have more theoretical foundation in the BHC than I do in Pony Club... lol)

When my desperate search for riding lessons of any kind led to a Western pleasure instructor, I started learning a little about Western bits.  I say a little - mostly we rode in snaffles or short-shanked bits (more like a Tom Thumb than anything else).

But I also saw a lovely little paint gelding that did great in a lesson for me in those bits, but whose owner rode in a Waterford sliding-cheek gag (on the bicycle chain end of Waterfords, too) with a single strand of baling wire for a crownpiece.  And a tiedown.  Why?  (Answer: Poor instruction and equipment cheats so that the horse wouldn't fling its head in your face when you went barrel racing.  No offense to barrel racers, but I've met way too many amateurs in that discipline with the worst fucking horsemanship, and I can't tell if it's a "moth to the flame" situation or just what's popular for girls of a certain age and mindset in this area.)

I hate braided nylon reins with a passion, but I thought these were neat.

I still can't say I really understood why the big curb bits get used, though.  That understanding actually came years later, when I was reading the Fugly Horse of the Day blog and followed one of the former authors off to her personal blog.  Cannot for the life of me remember the name of it, and I long since stopped tracking it because she wasn't posting, but she had a couple of lovely posts on moving a horse from a snaffle horse to a neck-reining horse in a curb bit.  Simultaneously, I had the opportunity to ride in a clinic with a lovely gentleman who had studied western dressage and was forming his own video show organization, in what wasn't quite western dressage and wasn't quite reining.

From those two sources, I learned that the point of the curb bits wasn't to saw on mouths, etc, but to use something that communicated the slightest movement so that the loose rein could stay loose and the indirect rein (ie, the neck reining) could communicate clearly - and in conjunction with leg cues.  I don't know that I'd ever be comfortable doing it - if only because I have some sort of mental block where I just cannot handle neck-reining - and I still can't say I'm terribly excited by the big curb bits, but in the framework of what they're meant to do... they're not actually as scary as the "omg, Western riding is so terrible" framework would have you believe.

I'm super-hesitant about gag bits.  Elevator gags actually bother me the least, because there's a very fixed set of leverage levels and a release is easily created just by the weight of the rings as the rein softens.  Sliding-cheek gags bother me a lot, for reasons that start with "if your hands aren't perfect, there's a long way to go for the horse to get a release" and include "how do you regulate the level of leverage when there are no levels?" and "if you should fail to check your tack for any reason and that rope gets caught on the bit and doesn't slide, you're gonna have some serious problems there, buddy."

On the other end of the spectrum, I've ridden in a hackamore a few times, and... I don't hate it, but the horse in question did not need to be in one.  She was a big, lovely Clyde/TB cross they used for actual hunts as well as hunter/jumper classes.  I had the pleasure of riding her in a bit, and she was a joy.  In a hackamore - which that particular instructor insisted that everyone ride in one so we didn't ruin the horses' mouths unless we were jumping, which I have opinions about - she pulled like a fucking freight train.  We spent a night perfecting walk/trot circles, and my ring fingers were blistered by the end of the lesson.  (The instructor's response when I told him there was no way I would be able to canter like this was, "This is why I encourage everyone to wear gloves," which I... also have opinions about.  That was one of my last lessons with him.)

So for now, I'm reserving my opinion of bitless bridles.  They seem to work wonderfully in certain situations, and for certain horse/rider combinations, and I'm certainly not opposed.  Just... one not-so-good experience does not make me want to jump on the bitless bandwagon.

Philosophically, I don't believe in "hard mouths."  It's just a term for "this animal has learned to ignore your hands and the action of the bit in its mouth," just like "dead-sided" is just a term for "you kick your horse so often he's learned to ignore you."  And like anything that's been learned, it can be un-learned.  Sometimes the path to that is ugly, because you have to find some combination of things that say hey, pay attention; sometimes it isn't.  I'm not going to lie and say I didn't start tallying up the amount and type of tack I'm starting with on Cessa and scowling some, because to my mind, a mild leverage bit and a martingale is a lot (and two sets of reins doesn't help, but a martingale on a leverage bit just sounds like trouble being sent for with a stamped, self-addressed envelope).  But I think it's achievable to drop down to a pelham, because it's not that far away from the bit our trainer had her in - and I think it's equally achievable to drop down from there to a Baucher, eventually, and to get rid of the running martingale once we're sure she's not going to try to throw her head in my lap at the first opportunity.  I'd love to get her down to just a plain old eggbutt or d-ring snaffle, but if she needs a little leverage, she needs a little leverage.

Unimpressed. Also in a too-loose D-ring snaffle and wearing only one set of reins, but it was just fashion show day.

You also can't discount listening to the horse.  If they're just going to constantly ignore a certain softness of bit, even after you've done what you can to get them into something at that level and nobody can get them to pay attention, then it's not safe and you ride in what you need to ride in.  Shit happens; there's no reason to get yourself killed in the name of "but their mouth is so soft and delicate and cannot possibly take this bit that will actually let me guide them, even though my trainer is telling me they see happy ears when I use it!"  And if they're going to back the hell off because you've got too harsh a bit in there, it shouldn't take a tense horse spinning up into a wreck for you to go, "Huh, they don't like this bit." 

In the end... Left to my own devices to pick a starting bit, I'm likely to reach for a simple single-jointed snaffle.  But from there, I'm pretty open to what the horse ends up with as long as I can safely ride in whatever discipline I've chosen to pursue that day.  That said, there are a few bits out there that I just... give side-eye to.  Like leather strap bits - I get the theory, but there's this voice in the back of my head whispering, "You have to clean that, and it's going to be sticky and slimy and squelchy and gross," and I just... cannot.  I can't.  It's irrational, and I know you basically just clean it as soon as you get off and it's fine, but I just can't get past the gross response.  I also have been giving some pretty heavy side-eye to the Parelli bits and the Myler combinations; I'm sure they do great in the right hands, but yiiiiikes, that's a lot of leverage and strap and bit.

Congratulations! You're almost at the end of this novel of a post!  Have a dog photo.

In the "bites" part of this post, I'm just going to briefly say that I'm am terribly glad that I did not encounter a loose dog while walking our last dog, because the dog fight I had to break up last week would have ended up a lot worse for our side if I was walking a dachshund cross and not a pittie cross.

In the end, everyone is physically OK: Laz didn't need stitches on his poor face, I'm just bruised, and thanks to the super-awkward five minutes where the other dog and its owner showed up at the same emergency vet, we know that a) the other dog has a home and owner and isn't just a stray, even if I didn't hear anyone calling it, and b) that the other dog had some punctures but was basically fine as well.  (I would have sworn to you, thanks to all the blood, that the other dog should have been missing a hand-sized piece of its side.  In fact, I think that's what I told my husband...)  Mentally, we're all a little shaken; it took me probably three days to be ready to cope with trying some peroxide on my brand-new jeans to see if the blood would come out, and a few more days after that to start trying to deal with the back seat of the car.
Breaking up dog fights?  First experience.  0/10.  Would like to never ever do that again.