A Bit About Bits

I want to deviate from speaking mainly about tacky tack in the fashion sense. I want to talk about one of the tack items out there that I consider to be just plain barbaric. With the increasing popularity of gaming and speed events, I am seeing more and more horses that are poorly trained or just plain crazy being ridden with more hardware than an entire Home Depot. These horses are usually ridden by children or young teenaged girls. Instead of properly training a horse, or going and investing the money in an already trained one, Parents living their dreams through their children are going out and buying any old horse that can run fast, shoving one of THESE into their mouths, strapping on a tie-down and turning them loose.

These contraptions ought to be illegal. This should be considered abuse. I have seen the nosebands be made from everything from lariat rope to saw-edged bicycle chain. I saw one recently that had the noseband made from a solid steel bar! The mouthpieces are usually a thin twisted wire snaffle gag and the shanks can range from 3 to 9 (!!!) inches long. The amount of leverage these can exert is unreal. Bits like this are intended to be used on horses that have NO feeling left in their heads and by an experienced horseperson. Not a 10 year old girl. This is NOT a miracle fix. These can cause far more damage in inexperienced hands than years of training can repair. In my humble opinion, if you cannot safely control your horse without one of these you have no business being on it. I have recently seen a similar bit being sold in a popular mail-order catalog being touted as a “3 piece twisted sweet iron wire with dog bone snaffle. 3" ring, 5" mouth. A wonderful bit for older colts, young horses or any soft mouthed horse. This bit picks up the nose first, then gently picks up his mouth until mouth and curb tighten for gentle but all over "nose, bars, lips, chin and face". Works well with any type martingale or draw reins.” WHAT?! Are you people insane? Let’s add MORE leverage with a martingale or draw reins.

Holy crap, my horse would flip over backward if I used this on her. She goes in a simple French link snaffle and it barely takes a twitch of my pinky finger to stop her. I had a friend growing up that had a barrel horse that used one of these, that animal was dangerous. They had progressed to increasingly more severe bits until this was all that would come close to stopping him, and then it was debatable. Many times I saw blood flying from his gaping, foaming mouth. It was not a hardware issue with him, rather a software one. He had never been properly programmed. ALL he could do was RUN. That was all he wanted to do. He was ruined because of this, the combination of the punishing bit pulling his head UP and the too-short tie-down pulling DOWN; he was forced to run in an unnatural position. He became broken winded and was discarded in favor of a new horse.