When you own horses and enjoy training horses, there are a lot of ways to spend your money on training equipment. There is probably a piece of equipment for every training scenario designed to educate your horse to yield to your idea.
If you ignore the scams, every device works at some level for some trainers on some horses. I’m talking about everything from the artillery of bits available to the harness designed to ensure correct posture or correct leg movement of a horse. They all exist because somebody had success with them at getting some horses to do what was wanted. So when you hear a chorus of “this is the best device ever invented” and another crowd saying “this is the worse device ever invented”, you can probably assume both statements are true for different people with different horses.
I think the first thing people need to look at when deciding to use a particular item of equipment is to ask what do they want it to achieve? It’s important to remember that equipment is meant to be a device to communicate an idea to a horse. It is not intended to make a response happen.
It helps to know what is the idea you want to communicate. Do you want to tell a horse that he needs to do what it is told and resistance is futile? Or do you want to let your horse know that if it thinks and tries something, life gets a lot easier?
This is a very important question because the answer will decide your choice of equipment.
My philosophy is that I want a horse to have choices in how it responds to pressure. I might weigh the choice a little in my favour, by making my preferred choice the easiest and most rewarding option. Nevertheless, that does not mean I make the alternative choices so hard that a horse would never choose them. Therefore, I choose equipment that is not designed to impose a response or make a choice that is too hard for a horse to argue.
For me, the equipment that I DON'T use falls into two categories. The first is gear that is fixed and where a rider or handler has no input into how it affects a horse in a dynamic way, such as tying a horse’s head around to the side. The second category is gear that has a leverage effect that allows a rider to out-muscle a horse in its refusal to submit to a rider, such as a mechanical hackamore.
Let’s look at the first category. What equipment is designed to impose a choice and take away a horse’s decision process? What type of gear discourages a horse to think through a problem?
I believe the answer is that any item of equipment that is not under the influence of a rider’s feel is gear that is only about teaching submission and obedience.
When a rider or handler can use a piece of equipment with feel, there is every chance a horse will be offered choices. But when ‘feel’ is not part of the equation, no choices are available to a horse. It is between a rock and a hard place. Take for example a Hanovarian noseband. These are very commonly used in English disciplines and the flash part is intended to keep a horse’s mouth quiet. But once it is buckled, it stays buckled with the same tension until after the ride. There is nothing in the noseband that has a ‘give and take’ feel to offer a horse at its jaw relaxes and mouth become quieter. The noseband has a fixed tension that forces the mouth closed and the horse has no choice about the matter.
The second category of gear designed to increase the muscle power of the rider or handler can still be used with feel. However, it is the leverage effect of such equipment that makes it attractive to people who don’t know how to offer feel to a horse. Gear like draw reins, running martingales, and gag bits exist to enable people to use more pressure in the hope that will create submission in a horse. Even though there is the potential to use such equipment with finesse, they are adopted exactly because people don’t know enough to use them in that way. It’s a Catch-22 effect because if people knew how to train with feel and finesse they would not need this type of equipment.
For me, my choice of gear is relatively easy because I can eliminate equipment that does not fit either of my criteria. Gear, like nosebands, don’t live in my tack room because they don’t allow adjustment of feel when I ride. Tie-downs of any sort also don’t belong in my tack room for the same reason. Chambons, side reins, market harboroughs, and Pessoas have no place on my horses. I have no use for shank bits, mechanical hackamores, or war bridles. Anything that I cannot adjust from moment to moment or that uses a mechanical leverage design to be effective is not something that I use in my work.
We can argue which bit is better or whether a rider should wear spurs or carry a whip or is a flag too much for a young horse etc. However, all of these items of equipment are under the direct control of the rider. At any instant, the rider can fine-tune the feel the gear presents to a horse in order to be more effective. Therefore, the choice of this type of equipment is less important than the education of the rider.
It’s not always obvious which is better because sometimes gear that seems to be a better alternative does impose more limitations on a horse’s choices than gear that might seem a harsher choice at first. For example, people will argue that riding bitless is kinder than riding with a bit. But some bitless bridles like a Dr. Cook or a Nobit bridle, tighten around the face of the horse and only offer a partial release of pressure. I would argue that riding with a well-fitted snaffle bit is a better option for a horse.
The way I go about choosing equipment to use on a horse is simple.
1. Know what I want it to achieve
2. Know how it works to achieve the end goal
3. Know that it fits well and is comfortable for the horse
4. Know I can control and adjust the feel it offers a horse in an instant.
Once those parameters are satisfied, choosing the right equipment is a simple choice - after that, I just need to worry about the price and is it a pretty colour that matches my eyes!
A side pull, which in my view is the best type of bitless bridle for training purposes.