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Heather
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« Reply #6 on: October 02, 2006, 07:53:46 AM » |
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Hi Michelle,
Have you read my book- goes into great detail about how to use the bit. But here is an article I wrote about it some years ago:
THE PELHAM BIT
I believe that the mouth is the key to the rest of the horse. Uneducated hands will cause resistance in the mouth, which will set off a whole chain reaction of further resistance throughout the rest of the body. When I was a child, the highest accolade that you could receive as a rider was that you had “Good hands”. It is a long time since I have heard that saying, because it seems to have passed into the archives of equitation, it being much more important now to get your horse “into an outline”, regardless of how.
I had always been taught that I must “make a fist around the reins”, closing my fingers firmly, so that I could maintain a “steady contact”. When I first went to Belgian Classical teacher, Capt. Desi Lorent for help, my “typical plebeian British hands” horrified him. I had been taught that to get the horse “On the bit”, I should saw my hands from side to side to make him drop his head. I knew instinctively that this did not feel right, but it seemed to be the accepted way of getting the horse into the ubiquitous “outline”. Having successfully winched the head down into place, you then had to hold it there with an advised “ten kilos” of pressure in each hand. At first Desi did not seem to realise that I had not been taught any other way, and despite being barracked on a daily basis for my overuse of the hand, the penny did not drop until in exasperation, one day he took me aside and said “Has nobody ever told you that you use your fingers, not your hands, to “ask” the horse to relax his lower jaw? You hold the reins firmly with your thumb and first finger, and then you are free to close them in restraint, to vibrate the reins to ask, or to open the fingers to “give” in reward “. Nobody had ever told me such a thing.
I experimented with different horses over the next few days, and it was as if someone had turned a key in a door for me. I no longer felt it necessary to move my hands around, because by using the fingers, there was no need. For the first time ever, subtlety of the rein aids came within my reach, and it was all so simple!
Suddenly, I no longer felt compelled to pull back my inside rein to turn or bend the horse. Desi instead, told me to raise the inside hand, and squeeze with the fingers as if lightly squeezing water out of a sponge. In this way, the horse will flex to the inside, just sufficiently to see his inside eye and nostril, not the whole side of his face. Lowering the outside hand, which remained in support at the base of the neck, acts as a barrier, to prevent excessive bend in the neck, which causes problems that we will be discussing in chapter seven which covers turns, circles etc.
With a young horse or a less educated older one, it is quite permissible to use an “open” rein, see photo, so that the hand is taken well out to the inside, but again, never backwards. This action helps to guide the forehand around, and can gradually be lessened, as the horse begins to understand.
I truly believe that the almost fanatical belief in the use of the snaffle bit as the only bit in which to educate the horse, is the prime cause of so many riders having such harsh hands. When I was a child, we rode our ponies in whichever bit they seemed comfortable. Since the emergence of dressage as a sport, those who elect to compete in this discipline have a very limited choice of bits- only ten different types of snaffle, all with basically similar action, and four varieties of bridoons and curbs, the latter, only permitted from Elementary level upwards.
It seems that unless you ride everything (regardless of how much force has to be used) in a snaffle, you are treated with scorn. The snaffle was primarily used in olden days for grooms, whose employers did not consider had sufficiently educated hands to ride in a double bridle. When the horse is correctly ridden in a snaffle from the start, most will go kindly in a snaffle for the rest of their days, going in a double bridle as and when required for competition. Sadly, this is often not the case. Many horses are badly ridden from the start, and because the mouth is so easily damaged, the corners and bars are covered with sensitive nerve endings which are all too readily destroyed by strong use of the hands. Many riders seem to think that the horse needs pounds of pressure in each hand, or backward tugs on the reins, in order to be able to feel the rein aids. This is rather akin to the English habit of shouting at foreigners as if they were deaf, in the hope that they will understand!
Try a little experiment with a friend. Take a pair of reins with a snaffle bit attached, and one of you take hold of the bit . Grasp it quite firmly, as if the horse were himself, “taking a bit of a hold”. The other person holds the reins as would the rider. The “rider” then tells the “horse that he is going to pull back on the reins. The “horse” finds that his reaction is to pull back even harder, and so a tug of war ensues, much as it does on a real horse. Now, instead, the “rider” closes his left fingers tightly on the rein, then slightly releases the tension, by softening the fingers again, alternating with the right hand, so that as the tension increases on one side, it is released on the other. The “horse” will want to yield his hand forward, much as the horse will offer to yield his lower jaw.
As the “horse” yields his hand forwards, the “rider” opens the fingers (still holding the reins firmly with thumb and first fingers but merely slightly uncurling the other three) and “gives”, therefore rewarding the “horse”. It is possible to “give” at least a couple of inches of rein, merely by this slight uncurling of the fingers, and likewise shortening them by closing the fingers again, all without any need to move the hands. The “rider” then experiments by vibrating the reins with his fingers, from a definite squeeze, to a mere flutter of the fingers. The “horse” will feel even the tiniest movement of the reins through the fingers on the end of the rein, even though there is no tension, just the weight of the reins alone. So does the real horse.
It is this variation of tension that creates contact. If the horse pulls against me, then I will close my fingers with equal tension, but never using my hand to pull back. Neither do I close the fingers of both hands at the same time. Again, I will use the alternating left and right squeeze that I mentioned in the experiment above. Instantly the horse yields his jaw, I open my fingers and yield the tension on the reins in reward, but at the same time, close my legs a little more to keep the hindlegs stepping under and the back coming up. If the horse tries to raise his head again the process is repeated, until, often in a very short space of time, the penny drops, and the horse will stay soft and relaxed in his jaw, on a very light contact, freeing the rest of his body from the tension that prevents him working “through”.
The snaffle, it is true, is probably the only bit in which the horse will allow himself to be abused to a certain extent. In a curb bit of any variety, the horse would be very likely to stand up on end to get away from the pressure, if you were to saw on his mouth as so many riders do in a snaffle, but curb bits i.e. Pelhams or Double Bridles, are actually much kinder in educated hands.
The bit is the key to achieving relaxation of the horse’s jaw. Relaxation of the jaw is essential, because if there is stiffness and resistance there, it will set off a whole chain of tension throughout the rest of the horse. If the horse does not respond to light finger pressure in a snaffle, what is the point of having to use force, which does not actually render the jaw relaxed, but makes the rider resort to sawing on the mouth to reel the head in at the front? When the horse relaxes his lower jaw, his head will go down of it’s own accord, freeing the back to round up, and enabling the hindlegs to step further under the body. Many horses do not like the nutcracker action of a jointed snaffle bit. Try placing one over your wrist, and pull back on it. Note how quickly the blood drains from your arm, leaving a white ring. Think how this affects the horse’s tongue and jaw. Ten kilos of pressure in the hands, exerted against the jointed bit in the horse’s mouth, will act like a tourniquet. One famous instructor of the Cadre Noir in France, wrote that he had seen horse’s tongues “turn blue or even violet” as the result of heavy handed riders.
I have worked with countless horses that were supposed to be difficult to school, because they would not work “on the bit”. In nearly every case, I have changed the bit and ridden them in a mullen mouth Pelham, usually made of metal covered in rubber, (not Vulcanite, which is too hard and thick), or Kangaroo metal. Because the bit is mild, with no nutcracker action, and the curb chain acts on the curb groove, which contains a reflex point which, when light pressure is applied, makes the horse relax his lower jaw. It is usually possible within seconds, if not minutes to achieve this, merely by “asking” with the fingers, without any force or sawing on the mouth. His stride will become longer, his back will swing, and above all, he will learn to carry himself. I cannot understand the rationale of the “powers that be”, which mourn the loss of art in dressage, and yet perpetuate it, by enforcing the use of bits that encourage heavy hands. Regardless of the fact that I can often transform a previously wooden and resistant horse in a very short time, into one that is pliant and willing, I have nonetheless been accused of cheating, because I have used a Pelham bit, not the regulation snaffle. People always say that the horse will come behind the bit in a Pelham. This is only true if you use the bit strongly.
The horse will indeed drop behind the bit to avoid the discomfort of strong pressure on the curb groove, but when the fingers are used to achieve nothing more than the relaxation of the lower jaw, the horse will lengthen, not shorten, over his topline. I could cite countless case histories of horses whose way of going I have changed in minutes by changing to a Pelham and riding in this way.
People often ask me why I use a Pelham in favour of a full double bridle. I find that the Pelham is a good everyday bit, and is ideal to introduce a horse to the action of the curb, without having cope with two lots of metal. I prefer to keep the double as the “icing on the cake”, the ultimate aid to refinement, to be used before and during competition.
Hope this helps-
Heather
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