I found a lovely website this evening called TheSoulOfAHorse.com. It is run by Joe & Kathleen Camp and its a wonderful visual journey of their path into Natural Horsemanship. I have selected one of Joe’s articles called ‘One Good Reason to Go Bitless’. I hope you all enjoy it and be sure to visit their website! They have several other blog articles & videos that I look forward to sharing over the next little while!

One Good Reason to Go Bitless?

by Joe Camp

Sometimes I think I’m really stupid. Like back when I thought that metal shoes nailed to a horse’s hoof seemed to be the right thing to do. I didn’t question it. In fact, I wanted to know why Cash came to us with only shoes on his fronts, none on his backs, when everyone was saying a horse’s hoof would disintegrate without the protection of a metal shoe. That’s precisely what I was told. Enough said. And I didn’t question it. That’s what makes me feel so stupid. I didn’t question it.

Then one day I read that a horse’s hoof was supposed to flex. And that flexing has a purpose. It circulates blood, which promotes a healthy foot, and provides a hydraulic type of shock absorption for the joints, ligaments, and tendons of the leg. And it helps the heart pump blood back up that long leg. The ramifications of shutting down that flexing by nailing a shoe on the hoof are huge and onerous (see barefoot). The horse has survived for millions of years quite well without shoes, and being a prey animal, a flight animal, his hoof is about the most important thing he has for survival. Sufice to say all of our horses are now barefoot with rock crushing feet, good to go on any surface. We are doing well by our horses.

Take two.

I received a note from Sheila Thompson in the UK praising our website… then asking me if I had tried a bitless bridle. Here I go again feeling stupid. I am professing to care about our horses, how they feel, what is best for them, and I never blinked at placing a piece of metal across a bone in their mouthes (Call it “bars” if you want to. It’s bone) and leaving it there for hours on in, never mind how light I think I am with the reins. I had never thought about it. Stupid.

Without realizing it, Sheila shamed me into giving one of Dr. Cook’s Bitless Bridles a try (she’s the UK rep for Dr. Cook). We ride a lot in just a halter, but only on the property, and in our small arena. Never out on the trail. Why? I can only rationalize thoughts about our own safety. Not the horse’s well being.

I ordered two of Dr. Cook’s Bitless Bridles and his short but powerful book Metal in the Mouth. Holy moly! There are so many things wrong with a metal bit in a horse’s mouth that I really felt ashamed. I won’t re-write Dr. Cook’s book here. It’s all available on his website http://www.bitlessbridle.com but I’ll relay a couple of concepts that got to me right off the bat:

• Metal on bone. Think about it. Picture a couple of your teeth missing on both sides and a metal bar resting on the remaining bone. A horse has a bunch of nerve endings running through that part of his mouth and a bit just resting there must be terribly uncomfortable at best, painful at worst. Now picture the way many folks jerk around on the reins. Pain-induced compliance. Instead of teaching. I can only blame fear for my resistance to removing the bit. Fear that if my horse ran off with me, no matter how much I cared for him and wanted to do right by him, I wanted to be sure I was able to stop him. Is a bit necessary to do that? No.
• When anything goes into a horse’s mouth (anything!), it triggers a “food-is-coming” reaction in the brain causing the brain to open the flap between the lungs and the stomach so the “food” it thinks is coming will go to the stomach, not the lungs. Thus a horse with a bit is in his mouth is not getting the full load of oxygen that he would be getting if the flap were fully open to the lungs. And, of course, the bit is usually present when the horse is exercising, often heavily, and he needs that oxygen.
• Have you ever seen a horse running with the herd, without any tack on? Was his mouth ever open? With a bit in his mouth, he almost always has his mouth open. Ask yourself why, and what problems that can cause. Dr. Cook answers those questions in depth on his website.

There are so many more negative issues caused by the bit, but I was won over in a fraction of a moment for one simple reason. Cash has always had issues that I had written off to his Arab-ness. As much as he is a lovely gentleman when I’m on the ground with him, under saddle he liked to go, and I mean go (or so it seemed). He didn’t like to maintain gait because he always wanted to go faster. He didn’t like to stop. And he didn’t like to stand still. We worked on those things a lot, Cash and me, and there was progress, but not a lot. He is, after all, an Arab.

When it finally quit raining enough this past winter for me to try this new fangled bridle, I was instantly amazed. Astounded, actually. All of those issues I had been writing off to Arab-ness were gone. Vanished! Cash would stop on a dime with just a sit-back, no pressure on the reins at all. He would stand there happily for half an hour if I didn’t nudge him forward. And he would maintain whatever gait I asked for.

Dr. Cook wasn’t surprised when I told him. Not even a little. He knows all the researched and scientific reasons why such reactions are caused by the bit, and he has heard thousands of stories like mine. But I’m still grinning. Cash is now the same wonderful guy under saddle that he is when I’m on the ground. We are truly one.

I urge you to not ignore this, for the sake of your horse and your sake as well. And, as I always say, don’t take my word for it either. Gather the information. Read Dr. Cook’s book and/or the information on his website, then give it a try. You will be amazed.

I would love to see this Bitless Bridle spread like wildfire so I gave Dr. Cook a small piece of marketing advice: “Forget the no-more-metal rhetoric, forget the pain, forget the  cruelty – all of which are true – the darned thing  just works better than a  bit!”

Now all of our horses are bitless.

Yippee!

Joe

The link again: http://www.bitlessbridle.com

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Joe Camp also wrote a bestselling book called ‘The Soul of a Horse’. Click here to read more or order this beautiful story!