Bitless and treeless, that is.<\/p>\n
I’ve never ridden in a treeless saddle. I’ve heard lots of gushing praise about how close you feel to your horse, etc, etc. Is it true? Don’t know. I’m curious, and I’m skeptical.<\/p>\n
Bitless bridles, on the other hand, I do have experience in – and I’m just not a fan.<\/p>\n
The mare I rode bitless was a big half-Percheron or half-Clydesdale (don’t remember which now) bay monster. *laugh* Well, ok. She wasn’t a monster; she was a pretty nice mare and an accomplished hunter, and it was a crying shame that her tail had been accidentally reduced to about four inches of dock and six or seven inches of (thick!) hair.<\/p>\n
The barn’s policy was that if there was going to be jumping in a given lesson, the horse was to wear a hackamore. Okay, I can kind of<\/i> see that – after all, you’re hardly going to chuck the horse in the mouth<\/i> if there’s no bit. And of course, if you’re doing a series of lessons, there’s not really much point in changing out the bridle in between, right?<\/p>\n
I rode this mare several times in a hackamore, and several times in a bit. She was 1000% better in the bit, let me tell you: polite and responsive, easy to steer. In a hackamore, it was more like dealing with a freight train. The last night I rode her – the week before my wedding – was in a hackamore, and she was pulling-pulling-pulling the whole time to get out of the circles we were doing and over to the jumping lesson on the other end of the arena. I didn’t think to wear gloves (usually don’t when riding) and near the end of the lesson when the instructor asked us to canter a circle, I massively chickened out because I was having issues controlling her and because holy shit, my fingers hurt<\/i>. I “got” to wear the remains of matching knuckle-to-knuckle blisters on both ring fingers to my wedding in addition to the usual bridal things.<\/p>\n
I realize my experience was with a single horse, but that single experience tells me that not every horse will be sooooo much better without a bit like some of the hardcore proponents claim. And to be honest, the mare didn’t seem to care one way or another whether she was being ridden in a bit or not. It was not a magic bullet to a happier, more willing horse.<\/p>\n
Will I try it again at some point? Oh, probably, on someone else’s horse. But if and when I get a horse of my own, I think we’ll stick to bits unless there’s some compelling reason why we have to avoid them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bitless and treeless, that is.I’ve never ridden in a treeless saddle. I’ve heard lots of gushing praise about how close you feel to your horse, etc, etc. Is it true? Don’t know. I’m curious, and I’m skeptical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,20],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bridles","tag-saddles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/horses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}