It's Not the Bit

Question: I am an English rider and I ride with the local foxhunting club. My horse is a sweetheart and does not buck or do any bad things, but I have a problem when the rest of the riders start to canter or gallop. My horse wants to be first in the pack and really thinks he’s a race horse. He’s a 15-year-old, 16-hand Appaloosa cross. I’ve tried lots of different bits with him — snaffle, Kimberwick, gag, and now I ride him in a four-rein bit which I was told would prevent him from putting his head down when we canter or gallop. He’s very strong and I don’t like pulling on him. A friend of mine has suggested a high port bit. What do you think? Answer from Ryan Gingerich: My choice for training and riding horses, ever since I started training back in the early 1990s, is the full cheek snaffle bit. In my opinion it is by far the mildest bit I can find. With my program, this bit makes the most sense because it puts pressure on the side of the horse’s face, it’s mild, and if I have to add pressure it’s not going to hurt the horse. Big, high-ported bits, Kimberwicks, four-rein bits — I don’t think they’re the best option for your horse. Let me make this clear: It’s not about the equipment that you use. It’s really about the training that you use. If your horse has gone through a bad teaching process, you’ll wind up with a bad horse. Getting the response you want from your horse starts with Basic Control, which includes fundamental elements like speed control, especially with a horse that wants to be in first position. When you ask a horse to slow down, he should slow down and stay at the speed you’ve asked for until you ask for a change. This goal is accomplished by getting Basic Control really solid. So often people try to fix problems like this by getting a bigger, more forceful bit. That’s very common. But it’s certainly nothing that I promote. It doesn’t help anything, and it certainly doesn’t fix the issue. You’re just putting a band-aid on the problem, and in fact that problem might escalate with a harsher bit. You need to find the root cause of what’s going on, and start with the basics. I know I may sound repetitive about the importance of Basic Control, but without getting that basic training foundation on a horse, you’ll continue to try to put band-aids on everything. Unfortunately, I’m the last resort for a lot of horses. If people would just take the time to review the training the horse has had, and ask ‘what is my horse not doing?’, the answer may become clear. That’s why I’ve developed the program like I have, and have ‘chunked’ it down into small parts that everyone can understand and be successful with. Start the process of going through Basic Control  (in hand first) — the six basic things that your horse must know how to do: Go, stop, turn right, turn left, back up and stand still. If your horse doesn’t understand even one of those six things, you’ll have problems with everything you ask him to do — at home or on the hunt course. Once you have Basic Control really solid with your horse, then you’ll move onto Lightness (the second DVD in the Connective Horsemanship series of five DVDs) — he’s relaxed, he’s comfortable with the shoulder exercises, he has flexion in his neck and hips. Then we’ll work on Rhythm (the third DVD in the series). Rhythm is where the problem of wanting to be out in front comes into play. When the horse is charging ahead and feels literally like a runaway, you literally have no speed control over the animal. We begin the lessons in Rhythm on the ground first before we climb into the saddle. There are three spots we use on the horse’s body to teach these lessons.

Spot #1 is on the girth, spot #2 is where your leg would hang on the horse’s rib cage if you were in the saddle, and spot #3 is where the rear cinch would hang from the Western saddle or if you drew a line from the back of the cantle on an English saddle. Spot #1 says ‘go,’ spot #2 says ‘go faster,’ and spot #3 says ‘move your hips.’ Essentially you’ll be working on asking the horse to go forward and to slow down. As you’ve learned in Basic Control, I always ask the horse to go forward with my left leg cueing his left front foot, or if I’m on the ground, I’ll tap the #1 spot (left side of the horse) with a dressage whip to ask the horse to move forward with the left front foot (the opposite applies to the right side). From the saddle or from the ground, I’ll add pressure with the rein (I use a full cheek snaffle bit and bridle even with the lessons on the ground) to slow the horse’s forward movement or to take smaller steps. When I add pressure and ask the horse to slow or take smaller steps, the horse should respond within three strides. If after three strides he still hasn’t responded to my cue — he’s pushy or just refusing to acknowledge the pressure — then I’ll increase the pressure. I’ll increase the pressure each second until the horse responds correctly or until I get an acknowledgment of the pressure from the horse, which may be a smaller step, or even a hesitation from the horse. The pressure scale I use goes from one to ten. ‘One’ is light contact and is the least pressure you can use, and ‘ten’ is the most pressure it takes to get the job done. If I have to go to ten, it’s by the horse’s choosing, not mine. The horse decides where I stop by responding to the pressure, whether it’s at one or at ten. The main thing we want the horse to do in these lessons is to respond to our cue to slow down. We won’t ask him to slow down for forever — maybe just one or two strides. Start on the rail, ask him to slow using your left and right reins equally and in rhythm with the foot falls. I’ll ask him to slow his right front foot, then his left front foot — and then I’ll speed him back up. Once he is doing this well along the rail, take him out into the middle of the arena and work on circles and figure eights with lots of transitions from stop to go and from left to right. I am not focusing on the quality of the turn, rather that he slows immediately each time I pick up the rein. I’ll repeat that hundreds of times in sets of five to seven correct repetitions, first left then right. Again, I will start on the ground and then progress to the under-saddle work. I will continue this process until the horse gets to the point where he’s responding correctly to the slowing cues every time. If I ask him to go fast, he’ll go fast; if I ask him to slow down, he’ll slow down; if I ask him to stand, he stands. When and only when my horse has responded to my requests at least 80% of the time correctly, will I bring him back to the trail and begin the process all over. Never spending more than 45 minutes on any lesson. Remember it’s all about basic control; it’s about how much understanding the horse has of what I ask him to do when it’s needed. By following a basic and sequential lesson plan and building a foundation of understanding, you and your horse can have fun and carefree fox hunts, with no fear of him charging out to the front and being out of control. For more information about Ryan Gingerich and his Connective Horsemanship program, visit www.RyanGingerich.com or call 800.359.4090.