Bitless, treeless, barefoot

At last I have been able to ride Dee this week. We had a session in the arena and she was very well behaved and responsive. I am looking forward to riding regularly again now, and also to having more contact with Red again.

I have been interested in reading White Horse Pilgrim’s comments about bitless bridles and treeless saddles. I enjoy his blog and respect and value his expertise gained from long experience (much longer experience than mine I must say). However we do differ in our opinions about these two issues. I have had good results with both my horses with bitless bridles. Dee was a riding school horse and so probably suffered at the hands of inexperienced and inept riders, hence it is perhaps not surprising that she responded well to being free of the bit. She is a strong personality however and rather spooky, so it is worth comment that she is easier to control without a bit and no longer tries to take control. I think she is just so much more relaxed without a bit, that she listens more to me and doesn't panic so easily.

Red is a different personality – quite docile and very safe, but stubborn and willful at times. He will try it on with inexperienced riders – he once took ’ö-Dzin into a hedge – but we have not found there to be less possibility of taking control with the cross-under style bitless bridle than there was when he was in a bit. The cross-under (Dr Cook style) bridle does need a slightly different approach. Firstly it is necessary to ride with less contact than is usually taught in English style riding, and if the rider needs to assert control with the reins, a pull on alternate reins is more effective than on both at the same time. It is also essential that the bridle is correctly fitted fairly low on the face,

I have a friend who happily rides her excitable part Arab mare in one of these bridles – in fact it was she who first introduced me to the Dr Cook style bridle. I was using an English hackamore before then.

With regard to treeless saddles, I cannot pretend to have any expertise in this area. I love my treeless saddles and my horses are comfortable and well in them. But they are not working a great deal or being ridden long and hard, so I am not a good sample by which to judge the saddles’ performance. When I was researching treeless saddles prior to trying one, I discovered an account that said trees were first introduced into saddles in order to have somewhere to hang stirrups. Stirrups enabled less-than-expert riders to become effective warriors in the saddle so that the Mongolians could increase the size of their armies for mounted combat. This would suggest that the introduction of a tree was for the benefit of the rider, not the horse. I have no idea whether this is true or not. However I have a friend in Finland who runs a riding stables of 30 horses. Their horses are ridden in felt pads – what we might call bareback pads in the UK. They have always been worked in these soft felt saddles with no ill effect – and these are small horses carrying adults of all sizes.

On a different subject, I finding it interesting that although White Horse Pilgrim clearly is not convinced about bitless and treeless, he is an advocate of barefoot horses. At my yard I have received no negative feedback about my horses being in treeless saddles and bitless bridles, but quite a lot about Red being barefoot. A number of people do not think I will be able to continue with this indefinitely and keep Red sound. He has been barefoot now for 10 months and has never been lame. His feet are tough and in good shape. One thing that is most noticeable about bare feet (Dee is barefoot also on her hind feet) is that the hooves stay clean – mud and stones do not get stuck in the feet so that they hardly need picking out, whereas Dee often has quite clogged front shod feet with stones wedged in that can be difficult to remove. I'm sure the fact that barefoot hooves naturally stay cleaner must be to the horse’s benefit.

I expect the debate about these different approaches will continue ad infinitum. I would be delighted to hear other people’s comments or experience of the bitless, treeless and barefoot approaches.

Less is more

We had a lovely ride in Coed y Wenallt on Monday evening. The weather has been dry and sunny - most unusual for Wales - and we have been making the most of it. Over the weekend we had to mend the roof of the loggia that got badly damaged in a storm last month. This was our first free - and dry - weekend since then, so we had to prioritise this repair. Consequently riding was not possible over the weekend, just daily visits to care for the horses.

'ö-Dzin is not a very experienced rider, but he makes up for this in courage and a natural ability. However we have been having problems with saddles with Red ever since we bought him last October. He is round like a barrel and saddles just slide round him. I suffered a bad knee injury the week we bought him coming off him after a saddle slip, and 'ö-Dzin has come off twice for the same reason. We've tried all sorts of saddles and eventually found that a treeless saddle seemed to give the best fit. When all our tack was stolen in January, we decided to bite the bullet and replace our saddles with two Torsions. We bought a beautiful leather one and an almost-as-beautiful synthetic one. We had been putting the leather one on Dee and the synthetic one on Red, but 'ö-Dzin had still been feeling that the saddle was slipping a little - not so badly that he thought he would come off, but enough that it was making him nervous of cantering through the curvy track in the wood.

On Monday we decided to try swapping the saddles. Red had the leather Torsion with the Equitex numnah. I put the synthetic saddle on Dee with our other treeless saddle numnah. This numnah came with rather hard foam inserts that I have replaced with the wadding out of an old pillow, to make a lovely thick pad. 'ö-Dzin found he felt much more secure in the leather saddle and quickly relaxed into believing that it was not going to slip. Dee seemed very comfortable in the synthetic saddle, and although it did not feel as well balanced as the leather one, I did not feel insecure. Consequently we had a couple of short but enjoyable canters in the wood.

I have become a great fan of 'going treeless' from my experience with these saddles. Both horses seem more relaxed and rounded in them, and I'm sure they improve my riding position. In fact I am gradually moving towards more and more 'natural horsemanship' style tack. Dee used to resist the bit, putting her head up and becoming quite difficult to manage. Eventually I found a drop noseband (as shown in the photograph) prevented the problem, but I disliked restricting her in this way. I felt that the way she opened her mouth immediately after I undid the noseband and moved her jaw, indicated that she had felt constricted. In the spirit of 'less is more' and believing that Dee was willing but uncomfortable, I tried her in a bitless bridle, an English hackamore. She has behaved quite differently since I have used this - calmer and more responsive to the lightest of contact. We had moved on to Dr Cook's style cross-under bitless bridles, but unfortunately these were lost in the burglary as well, and we have not managed to afford to replace these as yet. I had ridden Red a couple of times in one of these bridles before their theft and think he will do well in one as well when we eventually replace them.

I think it always has to be remembered that we control our horses through their co-operation, not through our domination. I feel that tack should be as minimal and as comfortable as possible to achieve the union of horse and rider.