CHAPTER - 4

RIDING AND ANATOMY

To learn about horses’ natural balance, watch as they caper in the pasture. When the horse is most animated and excited, his neck is highly arched and his head is almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground. He floats along with his tail up, his hooves light on the ground. When he’s relaxed, walking from one patch of grass to the next, his neck is long and stretched out in front of him. His back muscles undulate gently and his walk is rhythmic and regular.

Other animals use their tails to help them balance. Horses have heads and necks to keep them in equilibrium. That’s why the horse’s head and neck move forward and up at the walk and canter at the same pace as their footfalls. When you add an unbalanced rider who interferes with the head and neck by pulling on the reins, or using the reins as a fulcrum from which to post the trot or stay in the saddle, he’s disturbing the horse’s central balancing system.

In The Bit and the Reins, Gerhard Kapitzke notes that the horse’s back was not intended to carry the rider, nor was his mouth designed for bits. It just so happens that evolution and human ingenuity worked together to find a nice space on the horse to carry the saddle and a nice spot in the mouth for the bit. And so we have to be very aware of how we position ourselves in relation to the horse’s anatomy.

To look at bitting from a holistic viewpoint, we take a horse’s entire anatomy into consideration. Particularly important are the interrelationships between his mouth, neck, spine and surrounding muscles, and hindquarters. Because the hyoid bones are directly attached to both the tongue and the two large muscles of the neck, the flexing of the horse’s poll, as well as the fulcrum action of the head and neck, are a kind of gateway to the bit’s relationship with the body. Bitting problems often manifest in a stiff neck or a very tight topline. As the horse fights the bit, he stiffens his upper neck muscles—horses that travel “inverted” tend to develop muscles on the underside of their necks rather than over the top and along either side of their manes. They also might overdevelop the musculature on one side or the other.

Just as human beings suffer from “referred pain,” where a shoulder injury, for example, could have an impact on hips, spine, and other muscles and bone structures that aren’t local to the injury, so too do a horse’s overall conditioning, how he is ridden, and how his bit and bridle fit refer sensations throughout the horse’s body. Although we’re always talking about “independent aids” in riding, don’t confuse that with the way our body weight and balance—in short, everything we do with and to a horse—is interrelated and felt from head to tail.

Take a horse’s locomotion, for example: As the horse moves forward, he pushes off the ground with his legs. The order of the hoof beats depends on the gait he’s in. The action of the hind legs activates the large muscles of the hindquarters and the long muscles and ligaments of the back, followed by the ligaments and muscles in the neck. Those attach to the top of the head and the jaw. The elastic ligament in the neck is particularly important to horse locomotion and bitting in that the ligamentum nuchae (or neck ligaments) extend from the thoracic vertebrae to the head and down the back. These ligaments allow the horse to support his head and neck without exerting muscle strength. As the horse moves, these ligaments adjust to the horse’s head position to support it. The wide flat muscle under the neck ligaments and the longissimus dorsi along the spine are commonly referred to as the “topline” of the horse. These areas develop strength with proper training and allow the horse’s back to swing gently as he moves under the rider and forward into the bit. They also develop to support the rider and the saddle. When a horse is wearing an ill-fitting saddle all the time, the muscles of his back will develop oddly.

The relationship between rider, equipment, and proper horse development holds true no matter the discipline. Watch the schooled cow horse as he stops, sits, and turns to move a cow; or the barrel horse as he pushes off from the starting gate; or even the trail horse as he pushes up a hill. Each and every horse, no matter what kind of tack, will move up and forward and over his back. It is the rider’s responsibility to assure he’s met with a soft hand and proper bit. In the desire to make our horses happy and healthy, assuring the use of a proper bit eliminates a host of problems.

A young horse uses his back muscles to propel forward.