From time to time I come across a horse that has learned to put its tongue over the bit. This invariably causes the owner significant concern. I even had one person jump off her horse when I mentioned her horse’s tongue was over the bit. She was afraid that her horse was going to bolt or she would lose control in some way.
I want to briefly say something about the danger of the bit being under the tongue. There is the perception that this is a very dangerous thing for a horse to do. Some people believe that a rider loses all control if this is allowed to happen. I have never had this experience. I have never found any loss of control or dangerous behaviour because the horse’s tongue is over the bit. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I am saying that it has never happened to me. I’ve ridden several horses with no problem when their tongue was over the bit for long periods. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the horse’s mouth always became a little busier, I may not have noticed that the tongue was over the bit. I’m not sure where the deep concern about safety comes from. But ever since I was a kid I heard about the dangers of a horse’s tongue getting over the top of the bit.
In my experience, a horse tries to get its tongue over the bit whenever it finds having it under the bit uncomfortable. Sometimes this has happened to me when starting a horse. In the beginning, the feel of the bit is so foreign and uncomfortable that horses will occasionally search for strategies to either spit it out or find a different way to carry it in their mouth. But even then I think among all the horses I have started in my life, perhaps only ten horses have tried to repeatedly carry the bit under the tongue. So it is not a common occurrence. It’s been far more common among older horses that came to me for training.
Nevertheless, it does happen and people get concerned about it and want to know what to do to correct the problem. Over the years I found a surefire way to make the problem go away. Ignore it. It’s never failed me. Even with horses that came to me that were confirmed in this behaviour, ignoring the issue of the tongue and focusing on the issue of the softness to the reins solved the problem. Halleluiah, it’s a miracle.
In my younger days, I tried all sorts of solutions from bits with tongue plates to pulling the bit higher towards the roof of the mouth. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they only hid the problem.
However, what always worked was ensuring the size and type of bit was correct for the conformation of the mouth and training softness into the horse’s response to the reins. Almost always when a horse wants to place its tongue over the bit it represents a resistance to the bit/reins due to tension and worry. Horses will exhibit this resistance in different ways such as leaning on the reins, gaping their mouth, foaming at the mouth, tossing their head, etc. Placing the tongue over the bit is no different from any of these behaviours. It is simply a horse expressing its anxiety. Fix the cause of the anxiety and you fix the behaviour.
We don’t want a horse to carry the bit under the tongue because it is uncomfortable and adds to a horse’s anxiety. Anxiety causes a horse to explore the option of carrying the tongue over the bit, but carrying the tongue over the bit consolidates the anxiety. However, by allowing it to explore the option and choose for itself that it feels better to carry the bit over the tongue, while at the same time teaching the horse to remain soft to the reins, the problem is sure to evaporate.
Only when the habit of placing the tongue over the bit is so confirmed, should we resort to using gadgets or methods that make the practice difficult for the horse. This can help open the possibility to a horse’s mind that it could carry the bit over the tongue and feel better for it
The plate on this snaffle is designed to make it difficult for a horse to get its tongue over the bit.