The Best Bits

12/06/2025

Riding your horse in an outline involves much more than simply pulling your horse’s head in or using a gadget to do it for you!

07/06/2025

Understand Horses presents a webinar with equine trainer and behaviour consultant Trudi Dempsey on riding and training using bitless bridles.

20/05/2025

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20/05/2025

When we think about the horses we ride, train or care for, soundness and symmetry often go hand in hand and they are something many of us, quite understandably, take for granted.

03/05/2025

I believe that there is a way to use bits with horses that does not cause them pain, but actually benefits their body.

I also believe that bitless is a great way to ride, however bitless bridles can also be used abusively so just ‘being bitless’ does not mean that the horse is happy and accepting of the bridle.

As with everything - it is how you do it that matters and those of us who care take time to investigate the ‘how to’s and the ‘how not to’s.

I have seen my horse's poll, jugular groove and neck soften, the back lift and the stride completely change by using the bit in a different way - instead of pulling back and compressing the tongue, focusing on using the bit mechanically to lift it and only utilise the corners of the mouth and not the tongue.

This, combined with using the hand and bit to encourage softening of the mouth, TMJ and relaxation of the tongue, to me, is a way that a bit can be something that the horse accepts and enjoys having in his mouth and can allow for a horse to have a happy relaxed mouth with no noseband to negate the resistance that a bit often causes.

When we pull backwards with our hand, any bit will compress the tongue and linked bits will curl around the tongue and put alot of pressure on it - some bits also pinch the tongue as it does that. This creates a plethora of problems that we have a plethora of tack and gadgets to negate, but all of which puts the horse and the message he is giving us last.

When the tongue is so important - from it’s attachments to the hyoid and fascia to the neurological relation of the tongue to organs and muscles around the body, it makes no sense to ever pull back on the reins and it makes me wonder why we were all taught (mostly) to pull to stop. It simply makes no sense in any bridle - bitted or bitless.

Teaching our horses cues to soften and relax to the contact is what we should be doing regardless if the thing that we have on the horses head and in doing this, the horse builds trust in us and our hands and confidence in us and themselves.

02/05/2025

01/05/2025

Double bridles are not an issue in themselves – but education on their use and constant learning in all areas of equestrianism are key to continuing to improve equine welfare... read more via link below

25/04/2025

Felicitas von Neumann-Cosel discusses relaxation and connection from the horse's and rider's points of view.

25/04/2025

Johan Hamminga comments: “When you make the horse longer and you give him more rein and you keep the contact, you develop a longer neck, and then it is possible for the horse to stretch his hind legs under his body, like in the canter photo where the hindleg is nearly to the girth, and that is riding for me.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2018/02/looking-at-the-canter-a-photo-gallery/