Bridling Your Horse - Part 1

By Jessica Crouch


You watch enviously as your friend bridles her horse. The horse happily lowers his head, reaches for the bit, holds it softly in his mouth while the bridle is slipped over his ears, and blissfully chews up his little cookie reward. Soon they are off having a pleasant warm-up in the field and you are still on your tip-toes trying to jam a bit through your own horse's teeth. You love your horse, but are quite frustrated with this bridling problem. Why can't he just take the bit nicely?
He can, of course.  You just need to spend the time to teach him - and yourself - how.

We are going to assume your horse's teeth and mouth have been recently checked by a qualified equine dentist. Tooth issues can cause all sorts of pain and trouble.

We will also assume that you've made sure there are no sharp edges or burrs on the bit and that the headstall itself fits your horse comfortably. Make sure the bit is not pinching the sides of the horse's mouth. At Freedom Farm we generally use some sort of simple snaffle or three-piece bit, loose ring or eggbutt. We avoid any harsh bits as we want to build COMMUNICATION with our horse, not control them with force.  Now that you've ruled out any physical problems what's left are learned behavior and relationship problems. That's the fun part to work on!  



First, it would be great to review Mary Gallagher's haltering video. Often when people are having serious bridling issues, the haltering is not going so well, either. Haltering properly is so important that it is number one on my 

Bridling Prerequisite Checklist:

• Horse catches and halters easily.
• Horse lowers head softly, all the way to the ground, and will hold it there for at least 60 seconds.
• You can run your hand over your horse's whole face while his head is lowered.  
• You can massage the corner's of your horse's mouth and slip your fingers in and out of his mouth without him objecting.
• You can loosen the halter and slip it over his head rather than untying it when haltering and unhaltering - and he keeps his head lowered for you.  He is calm as you slip the tied halter over his ears.

Take this list with you and run through the exercises with your horse. You might be surprised at what issues you find. If anything on that checklist was not easy, it's best to remedy that situation BEFORE trying to bridle. Take the time to get all those pieces working well. This could take a few days (or weeks) but it will definitely pay off in the end.

In this article, we've gone over all the preliminaries and outlined some homework for you and your horse.  Next month we'll talk about how to actually bridle your horse.

 (Originally posted October 2014)