Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Is see-sawing the bit always wrong?

From: Lisa

Hi Jessica! I am concerned about the reply to this person because it sounds to me as though her friend hasn't actually seen her riding the youngster. What if she described it to her? What if her instructor is really just getting her to squeeze each rein to drop the horses head and that's just how she "describes" it? I have great success in getting a heavy headed horse with the alternate rein squeezing to annoy him just until he stops leaning. Lisa

Hi Lisa -- I'm really glad you asked this, because it gives me the chance to clarify something that is very important indeed. "Squeezing" the reins with alternating hands to make the horse drop its head is a somewhat less obvious (to spectators, perhaps, but not to the horse) version of see-sawing the reins, but that's still what's going on. It's not correct training, and it doesn't teach the horse or the rider anything useful.

The way to pick up a heavy-headed horse's front end is NOT to back him off the bit and force his head down with the reins; it's to engage the hind end and let the horse stretch its topline. As the hind end steps under, and the back lifts, the neck and head will come down and find their proper position. What is "proper" will vary according to the horse's conformation, development and stage of training. It's not up to the rider to try to decide what's correct for the horse, or to try to force the horse into an artificial frame. See-sawing, "playing with the reins", and "squeezing alternating reins" are all the same thing: an attempt by the rider to put the horse's front end into a particular outline. In the short term, this can put the horse's front end (and ONLY the front end) into a "shape" that may fool some people, but only the uneducated -- it won't fool a horseman, and it certainly won't fool the horse! In the long term, it will create a horse that can't move properly, and a rider who will be in the habit of using hands instead of legs.

The purpose of the reins is to allow the rider to communicate with the horse, gently and clearly and softly, via the bit. The bit should never be used to hurt, force, or "annoy" the horse. I put "annoy" in quotation marks because it's not an accurate word -- riders should realize that pulling the bit doesn't cause "annoyance", it causes PAIN. If you are in doubt, sit down, hang the bridle from your knee so that the bit hangs across your own bare shinbone, and let someone else stand behind you and pull the reins back and forth to "annoy" you. The pain you feel will be very close to what the horse feels, as the shinbone is the structure that most closely approximates the structure of the bars of the horse's mouth: skin over nerve tissue over bone.

Jessica

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