CHAPTER - 1

SO MANY BITS

“I have always found in my long experience that the horse’s mouth and temper may be compared to a lock, so made, that only one key will fit it; and to find the right bit patience and perseverance are necessary in so doing.”

—Benjamin Latchford

When I walked into Teun Van Riel’s horse van-turned-mobile tack store during the German Young Horse Championships in Warendorf, Germany, I knew right then what a project writing a book about bits was going to be.

I had just gotten the contract for this book based on an article I had written for the United States Equestrian Federation’s magazine, Equestrian. As a way to begin my research, I’d started taking photos of any and all bits I came across. But in Van Riel’s mobile tack store, I became overwhelmed with questions, all of which led back to one fundamental issue: How does one choose?

I certainly was no expert when I began this journey. Although I understood the basics of training and the purpose of bits, I didn’t have any more knowledge than the slightly above average amateur. While writing the article for Equestrian, I had disabused myself of some of the things I’d heard about bits during a lifetime of riding. I “knew,” for example, that a snaffle is a soft bit and a curb a more severe bit (which turns out not always to be true). I didn’t know why, or that there are a million nuances that disprove those two statements. In my personal collection were three or four double-jointed snaffles, a mullen-mouth, and a single gag bit purchased long ago for a horse that liked to take over on the cross-country course. The gag was recommended by a trainer and I had purchased and used it with much trepidation. I didn’t understand how it worked, and in retrospect I probably shouldn’t have been using it. I also had a couple of what are now considered old-fashioned single-jointed snaffles—one eggbutt and one full cheek—that I’ve had for at least three decades.

At the Bundeschampionat in Warendorf, Germany, I found Equine Industry’s mobile tack store. It was wall-to-wall bits.

So I came to this project relatively ignorant of my subject matter. To make it that much more challenging, I decided that I needed to make this book as broad as possible, encompassing as much of the bitting universe as I could. As a long-time English rider who started out in the jumper ring, moved to eventing, and is now trundling around the dressage arena, I knew little about Western bits and riding. I had a very judgmental attitude about those giant curb and spade bits I saw in Western horses’ mouths, because they looked to me like instruments of torture.

Little did I know . . .

The Dutchman Van Riel described himself as a “bit obsessive,” and indeed, if you talk to Europeans about bits three names come up: Hilary Vernon of Abbey Saddlery in the U.K., Heinz Baumann from Herm Sprenger in Germany, and Teun Van Riel from the Netherlands. At the Young Horse Championships, his mobile tack store was a museum of modern-day bits. He keeps hundreds of bits in inventory. And it’s a stunning snapshot of just how vast and complicated the world of horse bitting is. For every traditional single-jointed snaffle bit on his pegboard wall, there was a unique design or a gadget-like addition. There were bits with rope mouthpieces, bits with lozenges of different sizes, bits with rollers, bits with a figure-eight in the center, bits with multiple links, bits made of German silver, bits made of sweet iron, bits made of plastic mounted on ropes, bits with a three-inch rotating ring in the center. There was a certain delightful beauty in the bit wall and I probably took a hundred photos of his inventory. He didn’t have any Western bits, but I ran into several bit makers and suppliers later in my research that could rival him in terms of sheer quantity of inventory. They had snaffles; curbs with shanks of different lengths, ornate and simple; curbs with ports of varying heights and widths. You name it, they had it. Even our small local mercantile has plenty of Western bit inventory.

I’ve come to appreciate Van Riel’s obsession. Since starting this project, I’ve purchased several new bits, but I’ve also started examining bits much more closely. Even on casual trips to the local feed store, I’m in the bit aisle feeling the cool metal, laying the bit over my hand to gauge its balance, rubbing the edges and moving parts to determine whether or not they have sharp edges.

Herm Sprenger GmbH has been making bits in Iserlohn, Germany, since the 1800s.

One thing I’ve learned about bits is that having a lot of them doesn’t necessarily solve your bit-related problems. It may save you money eventually because you can experiment with different options without forking over $50 to $100 (for quality) or more for a bit every time you want to try something new. But in the long run, problem solving takes skill, training, and thoughtfulness, not equipment. For many years, I owned an event horse that hung his tongue out of his mouth. It was a habit that started long before he came to me. In fact, he’d been doing it since he was born, and although there’s no science documenting that tongue hanging is hereditary, his brother also had been known to hang his tongue.

You would think that I would have learned something about bitting during the sixteen years that I owned him. After all, every instructor I encountered just had to try to fix it. I tried special nosebands and tongue depressors and stuffing his mouth with peanut butter right before going into the dressage arena. I heard an astonishing number of rather cruel suggestions as to how to fix it: tie it down, cut it off, crank the noseband so tightly that the tongue can’t stick out and the noseband leaves a dent in his chin. None of it ever helped. Volare’s tongue habit stuck with him from birth to death, in January 2009 at the age of twenty-one.

It was just a few months after Volare died that my young horse decided that I was destined to learn even more about bitting and mouth problems by sticking her own tongue out of the left side of her mouth. I was right in the middle of my research for this book. I felt cursed, and yet blessed. Here was an opportunity to solve the tongue problem, using my newfound bitting knowledge. Turn to chapter 11 to see what happened.

Right now, there are thousands of different bits on the market at any given time. For each bit that’s currently for sale, there’s probably a new bit under development. And you can’t deny that some of this proliferation in bit choices is a result of the marketing machine—the desire of bit makers to sell more products or for horse trainers to supplement their incomes with their own signature lines of bits. After all, how many double-jointed snaffles and variations does one need?

As it turns out, you can try many different bits and never quite find the right one. And two handcrafted bits that look identical can feel vastly different in the horse’s mouth. It is one of the most sensitive parts of his body, able to pull a tiny sprout of grass delicately from beneath the dirt and direct it into his stomach. And as we learn more and more about the horse’s anatomy thanks to science’s advances, we’re better able to determine how individual horses react to bits and what happens in their mouths when they are wearing bits.

During a visit to the Herm Sprenger bit factory in central Germany, where they have been making metal products for horses since the 1880s, Brigitte Schulte and Heinz Bauman, director of marketing and product developer, respectively, told me that designing bits wasn’t just a market demand process (dressage rider Lisa Wilcox needs a new bit!)—it was a process of innovation. Sprenger has relationships with Germany’s veterinary universities and is actually able to perform some research studies related to how bits work, what makes horses perform better in certain kinds of bits, and the materials that seem to suit horses’ mouths. In fact, they are almost always working on new bits, whether for an upcoming catalogue or because one of the world’s elite riders has contacted them for help with a particular bitting problem—a common occurrence (and yes, there is now a Lisa Wilcox WH Ultra from Sprenger).

Nonetheless, bit-making is a business and has been since the very first loriners (bit makers) invented a new design for better battlefield control. Today, bit companies keep us buying by producing what could be the latest and greatest new tool to hit the market since we stopped using bones and ropes in our horses’ mouths. And maybe because we don’t know enough about training, or aren’t as educated riders as we should be, we’re convinced that the next bit will be the one to solve our problems.

Add in the fact that bits come in and out of style, just as certain styles of nosebands, saddles, pads, and everything else change according to whims of fashion. Some of these trends have been very, very useful to the horse and rider. Some have not. And for every “great new bit” there’s someone who will tell you it’s not worth the metal it was made of.

The horse’s delicate and sensitive lips are designed to find food no matter the conditions.

Fundamentally, all bits have the same purpose: to allow us to control our horses better. But when you dig deeper into bit theory, you can see all the small issues that can affect bit choice: the size of the horse’s mouth, the thickness of his tongue, how high or low the palate is, the width and depth of the bars, the horse’s training, his way of going, his taste preferences (some horses love sweet iron; some don’t), how he reacts to the bridle, and how it is adjusted. His conformation, his habits, and even the fit of his tack have an impact on which bit to choose and how to use it.

The manufacturers, too, incorporate subtle differences into their bits; a stainless steel simple D-ring snaffle may look the same from one catalog to the next, but manufacturers are rarely able to produce identical products from two different factories. As we know, horses are highly sensitive creatures and that stainless D-ring from X Company may have a slightly different weight or balance than the one from Y Company. It’s quite possible, with a magnifying glass and close examination, you’ll find an almost imperceptible difference between seemingly identical products.

And then there is the rider: How sensitive is he? How correct are his aids? Has he trained the horse effectively, using knowledge of the scale of training for his chosen discipline? What’s the difference between a Western horse’s training and that of a dressage horse? Can a horse really feel differently in two bits that seem identical? What if the horse gets used to one bit and then doesn’t respond as well? How does the bit figure in to the overall happy horse equation? Or should it at all?

The variables are mind-boggling.

Still, it’s hard to imagine needing some of those more obscure items on Van Riel’s bit wall. And, for the average amateur horse owner, there’s probably no need for a silver dollar–sized lozenge on an oversized loose ring. Yet exploring some of the intricacies of bit design can bring us a great deal of insight into how the bit should work, what our horses’ mouths are like, and how to use a bit humanely and wisely in concert with correct training. That, fundamentally, is the goal of this book.