So did Satan himself design this bit, or just one of his lackeys?

[Moderator 1]

Again, let's tone down the "offense" and "defense" stances, and focus on sharing information and ideas about the purpose, function, mechanics, applications, etc. of leverage bits.

Thanks again,
Mod 1

[cordial]

No....unfortunately I have learned that those that protest the loudest and listen the least are ususally in bed with the offenders.

I get very upset over the TWH plight....see I live smack dab in the center of it and the parties that seem to be hating the most on me KNOW IT. I am just waiting for them to say the PADDING and the torture contraptions and the mustards and not allowing the horses outside EVER is wrong. But alas I will not hear it as they blissfully ignore the abuses in their sport.

I have ridden HJ all my life at many barns and in Europe and I haven't seen anything illegally done. I rode at nice places with nice people and horses that were well cared for. I know that abuses exist from evil people and if I see it I will say something. For instance if I saw someone poleing a horse I would speak up.

I also take issue with the QH people who have their horses soo bulked up that they have ruined their metabolisms and breed back to horrible diseases to add bulk and muscle.

I breed German horses and all mine are like children to me. I lived in Frankfurt for 2 1/2 years and my brother lives in Berlin so any chance I get I try and go back. Enough info on me.

Where on this forum did any of the TWH people ever say any of the crap that you just described as "being okay" . No TWH person has ever said that was okay ....show me where anyone said anything close to that?????

[Achterbahn]

No....unfortunately I have learned that those that protest the loudest and listen the least are ususally in bed with the offenders.

Actually, that's not quite what I was saying *smile* What I was saying is that if you want to affect change, you need to listen and change things from the inside.

I get very upset over the TWH plight....see I live smack dab in the center of it and the parties that seem to be hating the most on me KNOW IT.

Wait a minute - who is hating on you? I think I'm confused by this statement.

Take a look at the USEF magazine and the suspensions for various acts in the H/J community. Take a look at the recent doping threads in the olympics. Those are "very nice barns" I would imagine.

I don't think anyone here is debating that soring is a very bad thing, are we?

Nun Ya? Cordial? TouchMeKnot?

Now, I think there is some debate on the pads, and that's something that certainly is debatable, but it's certainly not "natural" for a horse to jump a 4' fence either (in fact, most if given the opportunity if not trained for it will simply go around such things). It puts great concussive strain on joints and many show horses live inside and hardly ever go outside to be turned into the pasture.

[Nun Ya]

No....unfortunately I have learned that those that protest the loudest and listen the least are ususally in bed with the offenders.

ahhhh, now we see where you are coming from. You sure are protesting pretty loud and have not listened to anything.

Just because you live in Tn doesn't mean anything besides the fact that you live there. Because I live in GA does that make me a know it all in peach farming ????? How about if I lived a few miles down from a drag strip? Would that mean I know what goes on in a pit stop? I don't think so.

Have a good weekend everyone.

[Achterbahn]

Okay, so how light is the pressure used on this bit? Maybe a comparison of that would be useful. I thought it was interesting that you don't lead your horses by the reins - we do that all the time in a snaffle or pelham.

[Nun Ya]

I don't think anyone here is debating that soring is a very bad thing, are we?

Nun Ya? Cordial? TouchMeKnot?

No one ever defends the soring on here. No one approves nor uses those methods. But what we do defend is our padded horses and that in many people's eyes is the same thing. They tend to associate the padded horse as a sore horse just because he/she is padded. Not true.

[Nun Ya]

Okay, so how light is the pressure used on this bit? Maybe a comparison of that would be useful. I thought it was interesting that you don't lead your horses by the reins - we do that all the time in a snaffle or pelham.

That is very hard to put in words. The contact is enough to keep your reins from flopping but light enough not to pull the horses head in.
Walking horses need to be shaking their head, they are judged by how much head shake they have, if you had a death grip on the reins ( like what has been implied) the horse would not be able to "shake" his head or his head shake would be lessened and no one wants that. The more head shake you have the better. The tighter the reins the less head shake you get. Is this making sense??? If not I will try to go into it more on Monday.

I am not sure if many people can understand this because I think most horses do not have head shake or the movements of the tennessee walker so it is somewhat foreign.

[Achterbahn]

Do you move your hands in response to the head shake to keep the bit steady in the horse's mouth and keep from banging them?

[Xanthoria]

Better yet, can you show us a youtube etc video of a really good TWH going under saddle, with the head thing and so on, under a well-known/good rider in the TWH world - one that clearly shows the contact and the head shaking thing?

[sidepasser]

Here is my walking horse, Tyranna, all 17 hands and her very first show. The bridle she is in is called a tender touch bit and has very short shanks, she never opens her mouth and she always has her ears up. Still working on that headshake thing though - lol..

The lady riding her is a friend of mine that I bought the mare from. Also notice, no pads..uhm..no shoes either..she goes ok barefoot and has great hooves so why bother?

Now this mare is in dressage training to learn a few things like quit being a noodle and go straight and listen to cues as she was very, very green..actually she had maybe 3 months riding on her total when we went to the show just to see how she would do. She did get a little wide eyed, but hey..she's six, and had stood in a field for four years doing nothing before my friend bought her.

BTW - my friend shows twh's a great deal, none of hers are in long shanks and none are in pads, but all were from big name show barns that washed out and couldn't do the big lick. She retrains them for flat shod classes..and all go great for her. Happy horses she has.



She had never been in a group of horses before, but seems to have taken it in stride:



If she can get her front end coordinated with her back end, we might just have ourselves a very nice show horse but only if she can go barefoot..which out of almost 250 entries at that show, Tyranna and one yearling colt were the only ones I saw barefoot..kind of made the DQ laugh..but I didn't mind..we just wanted to have fun.

As for disposition and being afraid, scared, or what have you: this pic tells the story:



that is a wee little girl reaching up to pet her..lol..that went on all day long..Tyr loves her peoples.

Loose reins are the thing when teaching her to relax a bit:



I don't know much about the padded horses, but I do know about MY TWH, and she's a saintly gal that has got herself the good life and she knows it. She's gained a lot of muscle and weight since I've had her and is filling out, but still has her gangly days where she reminds me of a two year old baby.

Hoping dressage will take care of most of that with slow consistent work three times a week. We will see in another month how she's coming along. Maybe my noodle will turn into a straight line walking headshaker..we will see.

now back to your regular scheduled debate!

[DressageGeek "Ribbon Ho"]

Can someone explain to me whether the dressage concept of contact is different from the TWH concept? Maybe that will explain the disparity (at least to me)? I know what dressage contact feels like, and if you have a lot of power and thrust behind, the "feel" of the horse's mouth is very real (the trick, for me, is the flexibility and the coordination, so I am not saying that I always do the right thing!). I can't imagine how a bit with a large shank would help that. Could someone explain? I really knownothing about saddleseat.

[cordial]

Here is my walking horse, Tyranna, all 17 hands and her very first show. The bridle she is in is called a tender touch bit and has very short shanks, she never opens her mouth and she always has her ears up. Still working on that headshake thing though - lol..

The lady riding her is a friend of mine that I bought the mare from. Also notice, no pads..uhm..no shoes either..she goes ok barefoot and has great hooves so why bother?

Now this mare is in dressage training to learn a few things like quit being a noodle and go straight and listen to cues as she was very, very green..actually she had maybe 3 months riding on her total when we went to the show just to see how she would do. She did get a little wide eyed, but hey..she's six, and had stood in a field for four years doing nothing before my friend bought her.

BTW - my friend shows twh's a great deal, none of hers are in long shanks and none are in pads, but all were from big name show barns that washed out and couldn't do the big lick. She retrains them for flat shod classes..and all go great for her. Happy horses she has.



She had never been in a group of horses before, but seems to have taken it in stride:



If she can get her front end coordinated with her back end, we might just have ourselves a very nice show horse but only if she can go barefoot..which out of almost 250 entries at that show, Tyranna and one yearling colt were the only ones I saw barefoot..kind of made the DQ laugh..but I didn't mind..we just wanted to have fun.

As for disposition and being afraid, scared, or what have you: this pic tells the story:



that is a wee little girl reaching up to pet her..lol..that went on all day long..Tyr loves her peoples.

Loose reins are the thing when teaching her to relax a bit:



I don't know much about the padded horses, but I do know about MY TWH, and she's a saintly gal that has got herself the good life and she knows it. She's gained a lot of muscle and weight since I've had her and is filling out, but still has her gangly days where she reminds me of a two year old baby.

Hoping dressage will take care of most of that with slow consistent work three times a week. We will see in another month how she's coming along. Maybe my noodle will turn into a straight line walking headshaker..we will see.

now back to your regular scheduled debate!

Nice horse,sidepasser. You might talk to a farrier about shoeing your mare. It would help give her more drive in the back-end, which will make her head shake more. The headshake in a TWH is my favorite part of "what they do"???
You may not like to shoe a horse, but maybe a consult with a good farrier might help you with her gaits. Just a suggestion Good luck!

[rugbygirl]

It isn't different. Correct contact is correct, Dressage or TWH.

Look at sidepasser's green horse. Fairly supple, appears to be on the bit, not above or behind...nice natural headset for the breed. She is being well-ridden in the style of a barefoot TWH. And she's adorable

Look at some of the other photos on this thread...cranked heads, chin nearly to chest, neck WAAAAY to high. You can see that approach in Dressage too...crank and spank. It isn't the underlying idea of either discipline to force a horse into a "showy" frame...correct collection takes years...sidepasser's horse isn't perfect, but for a young horse, I would say she is quite exceptional!

When you see a two-year old cranked up...that's a lot like seeing a 4 year old "piaffe" when all that has been done is someone has smacked his legs until he picks them up and puts them down in the right sequence. Hell, with a talented horse, it might even look ok to the untrained eye, especially if the head is cranked down. BUT IT ISN'T. FOUR YEAR OLDS DON'T PIAFFE.

A natural mving TWH is a beautiful sight to see. An older, well-muscled horse, who has been appropriately trained...with pads and chains and the right bit to accentuate the natural movement...WOW.

People take stupid shortcuts in all disciplines.

[Achterbahn]

But it's appropriate to the amount of leverage on the bit, no?

For instance, I would probably not use the same amount of contact on a double that I would on a snaffle - the weight of the reins would be different. Same would go for riding my horse in a halter vs. riding my horse in a snaffle - the amount of "feeling" in my fingers would be different.

For instance, in many of those pictures with the large shanked bits I see open ring fingers which is something you just can't do if you're pulling. So while the force of the open ring fingers is magnified by the shank, the actual pull on the horse's mouth I would think would be similar to what I would get in a snaffle with closed ring fingers and a more taut rein.

Am I missing the boat here?

[Achterbahn]

And just 'cause I would like to finish the thought - if I'm using a double (or a pelham) I was always taught to put my weakest finger against the curb rein because of the magnification of the output. For exactly the same reasons.

[Auventera Two]

I'm sorry A2, are you addressing me?

No, I was talking to cordial. Sorry!

[TouchMeKnot]

Can someone explain to me whether the dressage concept of contact is different from the TWH concept? Maybe that will explain the disparity (at least to me)? I know what dressage contact feels like, and if you have a lot of power and thrust behind, the "feel" of the horse's mouth is very real (the trick, for me, is the flexibility and the coordination, so I am not saying that I always do the right thing!). I can't imagine how a bit with a large shank would help that. Could someone explain? I really knownothing about saddleseat.

The contact that we ride Gunslinger (on the curb bit) on is just "a feel of the mouth," like if you put your fingers inside his mouth and just rested them there with just the slightest pressure of touch. When we ask him to move on in an extended running walk, we raise our hands slightly as he will pick up his head, tighten the reins just a little, and ride him from behind into the contact. As soon as he picks up the extended running walk, we drop the contact back to just the "fingers feeling his mouth" to maintain the extended gait. At the same time, the rein should be short enough that any adjusting of the fingers is felt in the mouth. The reins should not flop around. He is trained to stay in the gait we put him in until we ask for a change, and he is very consistent. For me to ride him in AOT class, I just cluck, tighten my fingers, raise my hands, and he goes into his extended gait. In the Open Class, my show partner rides with spurs and moves Sling up into a more extended frame. I'm not comfortable riding in that frame yet; the horse is really moving fast in the open class.

Also, I feel it necessary to state that while you have a light feel on the reins, you have sufficient grip that if the horse stumbled or jerked his head, you would still be holding the reins. You don't want to lighten the grip on the reins to a point where one bobble with the horse's head, and the reins can fall out of your hands. At the same time, you don't want a death grip on the reins where you are clutching them. You want to keep feel of the horse's mouth, and you want him to feel your fingers squeezing or pulling lightly. You can practice the grip and the feel with another person holding the reins.

The exercise that I described that my trainer did with me can be done with anybody. Get on your horse, have somebody hold the reins near the bit (one rein in each hand), so the horse doesn't feel the pressure, the person feels it in his/her hands; then pull on the reins in your normal "contact" feel. Then, you hold the reins in your hands (still on your horse), and let the other person "pull " the reins on you as much as you were pulling. This will teach you an incredible lesson in how much you pull you have on the reins. It is an incredibly illuminating exercise; it helps you understand what the horse is feeling, how little of a touch is really needed, and how heavy or light your hands are. In the exercises we did, we repeated the pull on the reins, until we got the right contact, the light feel. In our case, we had an expert horseman pulling back, teaching us the right feel, but you can learn the feel through your own exercises.

Some horses need a little bit heavier contact to guide them, like our mare Sweety. She is 2 years younger than Sling and has only been in training for a year. She needs the contact to hold that frame/gait. She doesn't have the muscle and condition built up yet, and she doesn't carry herself and hold herself together like Gunslinger does. So we have to use a little more contact. I think there is a thing in dressage where the horses "chews the reins" out of the rider's hands in one of the tests. Chewing the reins out of the hands, means that the rider gradually releases the contact and the horse still has self-carriage, maintaining his frame and his gait. Gunslinger can do this and maintain carriage; Sweety hasn't progressed that far.

With Flash, I personally keep a tighter contact because he is flighty and I want more attention paid to me than whatever else happens to be interesting him at the moment. He is a really wired up, high motor, small, fast horse, and it takes a lot of skill to ride him (and stay on)!

When I've ridden on snaffles, we've used heavier contact than the contact I'm describing. The curb shank is a lever and increases your contact in the mouth, so the horse is feeling more in his mouth than what you are actually applying. With a snaffle rein, the amount of pressure you apply in your hand is the same amount the horse feels.

Regarding whether you use a following hand or let the horse bump against the bit, it depends on what you are doing. When I'm just hacking out, I use a following hand (moving with the horse's head motion), so that I maintain an even pressure on the bit. When the horse is gaiting in the show, we use a steady hand and let him come on the bit. Since the contact is just "a feel of the mouth," it isn't a hard bump that will knock him out of his gear.

In describing feel, it is necessary to describe the difference in the motion of the horse. In dressage, at trot, you will feel up/down motion. On a TWH that is gaiting smoothly, there is no up/down movement at all. It is all FORWARD motion, and it is like riding a jet when you get on a high-motor show horse. We don't do all the transitions and circles that dressage horses do (unless we're specifically training or showing in TWH dressage); we get our horses going in gait and we ride in long oval rings. We judge on consistency, rhythm, length of stride, animation, and headshake rather than judging movements like you do in dressage: 20 meter circles, transitions to canter, etc. I think to understand the contact, you need to also understand the motion of the horse and what we're doing with him. We will transition from a flat-foot walk (brisk walk with overstride) to a running walk (extended walk with plenty of overstride--sometimes 12 to 18 inches overstride), and then to canter if it is a canter class. But we are not doing all the circling, shoulder-in, half-pass and other movements that you would be doing in a dressage test.

Regarding leading with the reins, I was describing horses that wear shanked show bits. The reason for not leading them with the reins is that if you stumble or they stumble or they spook and jerk on the reins, it is a huge bang to the mouth. A pelham or snaffle rein will not give that kind of huge bang to the mouth if the horse stumbles. This is part of understanding how to handle show horses in shanked bits.

So that is the TWH contact from my perspective; maybe you can describe what you feel on the dressage contact. I've only ridden one upper-level dressage horse (and made a mess of it). She responded to every shift in seat, every squeeze on the reins, and I wasn't steady enough of a rider at the time, so I ended up piaffing, half-passing, and doing all sorts of things that I wasn't trying to do. The lower-level horses I've ridden typically had hard mouths, and required a heavier leg and heavier contact in the mouth. Some of them leaned on the bit, and were exhausting to ride because they required more pull than just contact.

[Achterbahn]

No problem - dontcha just love internet communication?

[akrogirl]

When you see a two-year old cranked up...that's a lot like seeing a 4 year old "piaffe" when all that has been done is someone has smacked his legs until he picks them up and puts them down in the right sequence. Hell, with a talented horse, it might even look ok to the untrained eye, especially if the head is cranked down. BUT IT ISN'T. FOUR YEAR OLDS DON'T PIAFFE.

Someone better tell my mare that, lol. She is in H/J training, but did a beautiful, admittedly unasked for, piaffe for our assistant trainer one day ;-)

[alterhelpeater]

All people that compete with horses abuse horses, but, they just love to bash the TWH because it makes them feel better about how badly they treat there horses The glass houses get a little hot though.