Does your horse really need to have a bit?

To use a bit or not, has often been discussed by horsemen.

Many people go to a bigger, harsher bit when their horse doesn't respond. It could be that the horse's head is not in alignment. The skull is not one big bone, it's many bones fused together. If a horse pulls back those bones can shift.

This affects the teeth and how the bit feels in the horse's mouth.

Learn how to correct the teeth, the temporal mandibular joint, and other cranial issues and you might be able to go bitless.

Resources:
Level 1 Home Study: https://bit.ly/43HRERV
Level 2 Home Study: https://bit.ly/3oXQPWh
Equine CranioSacral Energy Work: https://bit.ly/43toDK0

To keep learning about horses:
• Sign up for our email list: https://bit.ly/44t9Q1V
• Get the free Horse 101 ebook: https://bit.ly/3ChKAQr
• Shop videos & courses: https://bit.ly/43vhsku
• See the global clinic schedule: https://bit.ly/3CZiaee
• Visit the HHW website: www.holistichorseworks.com

Thanks for listening!
#holistichorseworkstalks

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

Hi, this is Lillian.

00:00:01 Speaker 1

I'm here with April love.

00:00:03 Speaker 1

I've seen a lot of discussion on Facebook groups about whether to ride in a bit or without a bit. What do you think?

00:00:12 Speaker 2

So, I get into the balance of the horse's head. If you go to my website holistichorseworks.com, you can look on the cranial page.

00:00:22 Speaker 2

And I tell people to measure the balance of the head first before you even think about a bit. If it was me, I had braces for 2 1/2 years. I wouldn't want metal in my mouth.

00:00:34 Speaker 2

So, unless you're showing and need explicit control, or when I was doing 50-mile cross country endurance rides and you start at 6:00 in the morning on a fresh horse with thirty horses taking off.

00:00:47 Speaker 2

I was in a little light Tom Thumb because I had an Arab that had been on the racetrack and I needed to monitor our speed and tuck them in behind someone and not be running through rocks, you know? But after 15 to 20 miles at the next vet check, I would switch them out to the Arabian S hackamore. If you don't have to have something all the time in their mouth.

00:01:09 Speaker 2

Your horse is going to be so much happier, so my favorite is the Arabian S hackamore.

00:01:14 Speaker 2

You can get those on Jeffers because you can ride English or Western and the horse can eat or drink.

00:01:20 Speaker 2

You still have a lot of control.

00:01:22 Speaker 2

It has shorter shanks than the regular long hackamores.

00:01:27 Speaker 2

There's other kinds of nose things. You have to kind of play around with what your horse likes.

00:01:33 Speaker 2

But first you should evaluate the balance of their head.

00:01:37 Speaker 2

So, when you're looking straight on at your horse and you have his nose down, so like his forehead is right at your chest level.

00:01:46 Speaker 2

You can put one hand on each side of their cheekbones, kind of where the halter goes on the side and you'll see one side is higher than the other.

00:01:54 Speaker 2

So, one side TMJ has dropped and once you see that.

00:01:58 Speaker 2

You'll see that one nostril is lower, and if you move up and you put your hands on top of the bones over their eyes, you'll see that one of those is higher.

00:02:08 Speaker 2

And we teach about that in my equine cranial DVD and Level 3 hands on class.

00:02:13 Speaker 2

We do manual manipulation of the cranial bones.

00:02:17 Speaker 2

And people say so, why is that important?

00:02:19 Speaker 2

That's just like that way. Maybe it was born that way.

00:02:22 Speaker 2

I’m like, no, they're not born that way.

00:02:24 Speaker 2

You have 26 different cranial bones that fit together like a jigsaw piece puzzle, and when the horse pulls back when tied or a three month old foal being haltered for the first time and is fighting with the handler or putting their head through to graze on the other side and then getting spooked and pulling back. There's so many different things.

00:02:45 Speaker 2

That happen in the horses that that we didn't used to have 25, 30 years ago when we used the flat web halters with the cheap little clip on the bottom.

00:02:56 Speaker 2

When the horse pulled, they broke it, and they ran away and less damage was done to the horse.

00:03:02 Speaker 2

So, we're seeing more damage done to the horse with the knotted rope halters the patients.

00:03:08 Speaker 2

You know that thin rope is meant for like cliff climbing.

00:03:12 Speaker 2

And when the horse goes into fight or flight, and they're struggling.

00:03:17 Speaker 2

That really thin rope goes all the way up is doing a lot of damage on the nuchal ligament attachment to the back of the occiput, and it grabs the bone up between their ears, occiput and parietal and jams it down and forward and within three to four years you're going to start having metabolic issues, insulin resistance, cushings autoimmune issues.

00:03:41 Speaker 2

If you Google cranial sacral for people, all of those issues come up.

00:03:46 Speaker 2

So, if you're finding that your horse has a weepy eye, that lacrimal bone has dropped and shifted in that eye.

00:03:56 Speaker 2

Is not as healthy as it could be, and it's throbbing on the horse.

00:04:00 Speaker 2

And so, they're rubbing it on everything, including their front leg where the fly spray is.

00:04:04 Speaker 2

So, they're putting poison into it.

00:04:07 Speaker 2

So, you know, my whole program of, you know, the head and the balance and the bitting and everything is all about the whole balance of the horses.

00:04:17 Speaker 2

And you know, getting their teeth checked every year should not be done by anyone that has not done that $25,000 in schooling to be an equine dentist.

00:04:28 Speaker 2

Each tooth means something, and anyone that's putting a flat file in there and power tools is taking all the teeth down at once.

00:04:38 Speaker 2

If you look at the side of a horses jaw, there's a curve in the jaw and the teeth go up towards the back.

00:04:45 Speaker 2

They come down in the middle and they go up a little bit in the front.

00:04:48 Speaker 2

So, if you're doing a flat file in there, we're doing more damage than good.

00:04:54 Speaker 2

I know we have to balance the teeth, but doing the cranial work is what balances the teeth, because then the horse can actually chew correctly, and wear his own teeth down.

00:05:06 Speaker 2

And you don't want to use someone that only does the backs and doesn't balance the front.

00:05:11 Speaker 2

I had a dentist come out and do power tools, sedated my horse smoke coming out the mouth.

00:05:17 Speaker 2

He was 15. I only rode him in an Arabian S Hackamore, and she gave him a bit seat, which takes down that first side chewing tooth right behind where the bit goes and destabilized his whole mouth.

00:05:29 Speaker 2

His whole top line dropped.

00:05:31 Speaker 2

He lost all his physique and conditioning.

00:05:35 Speaker 2

He could barely chew, and this was a very high, well-known place that they don't want to mention their name? But I was like, wow, I paid $850 to ruin two horses teeth. And I can't believe that I watched this and allowed it. And it actually took five years for my horse's teeth to start erupting, again and growing, they took him so close down to the gums at age 15.

00:06:05 Speaker 2

So, it took a couple of years to get that back. So, when you're just talking about bidding and not bidding, really need to address, you know, how the horse’s cranial bones are moving? Is the TMJ in balance?

00:06:19 Speaker 2

Because if you have a bit in the mouth and you're, you know, with your little pinkies on the reins and you're like, well, my horse isn't giving to the left rein.

00:06:28 Speaker 2

That side TMJ is probably dropped and the writer pulling on that rein, saying give to the bit, give to the bit is actually destabilizing the whole TMJ joint on that side.

00:06:41 Speaker 2

So, go to my cranial page.

00:06:44 Speaker 2

I actually have on my website how to do cranial yourself level 1 energy work, the worst thing you can do is not try.

00:06:51 Speaker 2

You can't screw it up.

00:06:53 Speaker 2

And you'll notice a big difference in your horses and how soft they are, because heavy and argumentative to the bit means the TMJ can't give on that side and your pull your atlas and axis are not in alignment so they can't bend at the pole to get on the bit.

00:07:10 Speaker 2

So, a bigger bit, I mean look at the snaffle, that's a huge poker in the roof of the horse's mouth.

00:07:15 Speaker 2

And when people do dressage and they have to use a cavesson and tie the horse's mouth down so that they respond to the bit, they would be so much happier if they just did all the cranial work and the horse could just listen to absolutely every little cue that you gave them, instead of having to yank on their mouth, to get them to turn or stop, or, you know, because think about how soft their lip lining is when you put your finger in where the bit goes.

00:07:44 Speaker 2

That's really soft in there.

00:07:46 Speaker 2

And when we have, you know, I've had to ride horses that were dead, runaway horses at the gallop with a roller bit in a hood.

00:07:53 Speaker 2

Before I knew about all this, and it's like I have no brakes.

00:07:56 Speaker 2

So, I sympathize with people that say they have no brakes on their horse if they don't use a bigger bit.

00:08:03 Speaker 2

But they're still missing the fact that, you know, horses running on adrenaline and pain, and when they're running on adrenaline, you're not going to have breaks, so it's still better to do my level 1 musculo-skeletal unwinding program which is home study on video.

00:08:20 Speaker 2

Once you pay for it, it's a digital download you get immediately. 

00:08:24 Speaker 2

You get a free distance reading for your horse, the workbook, the video and everything so you can get started.

00:08:30 Speaker 2

You'll find the cranial video on there of how to work on your horse and learning all this and doing this for your horse is going to give you such an amazing bond.

00:08:39 Speaker 2

The horse is going to look at you with bright deep eyes and say, what are we going to do today instead of turning around and giving you their butt when you go out there with the halter and lead rope and they're just so willing and so athletic and they stay sound and happy and they're chewing, I mean, even mysterious colics can be from impactions of the horse not being able to chew sideways. So, when you go up to your horse's head and you rub up and down on the forehead, see if any of the skin moves over the bone.

00:09:14 Speaker 2

Now put your fingers on your forehead and you'll see that the skin moves because there's supposed to be blood and fascia should slide between the hide and the skull.

00:09:24 Speaker 2

You know that fascia should move everywhere in the body and a lot of these horses, that hair is just stuck to the bone.

00:09:32 Speaker 2

And I'm like, Oh my God, that's like having an over-tight facelift.

00:09:37 Speaker 2

Yeah, there's nothing that's going to be happy in the horse.

00:09:39 Speaker 2

They're not going to be able to chew.

00:09:40 Speaker 2

Well, they're not going to be able to digest.

00:09:42 Speaker 2

Well, so the head is really important.

00:09:46 Speaker 2

On my YouTube channel Holistic Horse Works, if you go to playlist. I have one just on videos for how to evaluate the horse's head yourself. You can also take a thin tape measure, you know a soft kind not making a lot of noise.

00:10:05 Speaker 2

And when you bit the horse up, take started the tape measure directly in the middle of the poll.

00:10:11 Speaker 2

You know where the leather bridle is and go all the way down to each lip line. You might find one side is 1/2 to an inch lower and that's the side that the horse can't give to you on the bit when you bit him up, is there one wrinkle on one side and two wrinkles on the other side?

00:10:29 Speaker 2

OK, the head is out of balance.

00:10:32 Speaker 2

And people are like, well, yeah, but what is that really going to mean in the long run?

00:10:37 Speaker 2

Well, your TMJ balance is your hind end holding its alignment and your sphenoid is your stifle.

00:10:44 Speaker 2

So, something in the head is also relating to something else elsewhere in the body.

00:10:50 Speaker 2

So, if you're having hard to bridle horse, autoimmune issues, Cushings, the long hairs that aren't shedding. Then If you squeeze on the top of the main going from the poll all the way down to the withers.

00:11:06 Speaker 2

It shouldn't get thicker in the middle, which is a sign of pre-Cushings with the fatty pockets they're starting to store there.

00:11:13 Speaker 2

Anytime I see that, I go back to the head, the head has had a lot of trauma and we need to address that and then all the other symptoms will clear up.

00:11:23 Speaker 2

So, on holistichorseworks.com on my shop page you'll see a $60.00 video where you can start working on cranial yourself, once or twice a week on your horse.

00:11:33 Speaker 2

And you'll be amazed at how loving, soft and kind your horse starts being with you in this new bond that you get.

00:11:41 Speaker 2

And my saying is the worst you can do is not try so you can always e-mail me April@holistichorseworks.com with any questions. I also do distance readings on horses which gives you a seven-page report on everything that's going on in the head and metabolic and where there's pain and what bones are out of line.

00:12:04 Speaker 2

So, holistichorseworks.com is my website. Thank you.