Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Horse grabbing bit

From: "B. Gatti"

Hi! I am new to this list as of approximately 2 minutes ago. I have a 7 year old quarterhorse gelding. I ride western, and sometimes he tries to get the side of the bit (curb) in his mouth. He plays with it in his lips. Is there any way I can get him to stop? I don't want to jerk it away from him, but it really bothers me. It looks especially bad in shows. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

-Brooke and Johnny :)

Hi Brooke, and welcome to the list! Horses do sometimes like to play with the shanks of a curb, but there are a couple of things you can do to avoid this problem.

Here are two suggestions:

1) Find a bit that has a bar that holds the shanks together at the bottom; this makes it quite difficult for the horse to grab one shank. If you're clever with bits of wire, or if someone at your local tack shop does bit repair, you can have such a connector added to your current bit.

I'm not good at ascii art, but here (sideways) is an illustration, with the mouthpiece on the left and the rein rings on the right. All you would need to do is have someone add a piece of metal between the bit rings.

 before                          after
 O----o                          O----o (                               (     ]  O----o                          O----o

2) Another way to avoid this problem is to change to a bit (same mouthpiece) with S-shanks. The cavalry used these, and found that they really did keep the horses from grabbing at the shanks. Most bit manufacturers offer one or more models with S-curved shanks.

Good luck!

Jessica

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