I had a wonderful week of riding all three horses.  We have had absolutely wonderful spring weather and everything worked out.

Last week I just got to ride once, on Mia, with the JP Dr. Bristol bit that I used with her before I tried the JP copper roller full cheek bit.  This ride with the Dr. Bristol was fine, but my next ride was a thorough review of all of Mia’s bit evasions and protests.  This was following a general deterioration of contact with Mia’s mouth that I had blamed on my physical klutziness from my recent MS attack.  When I finally was physically able to ride Mick and Cider they did not protest my contact at all even though my body still had problems from the MS attack.  So I decided to THINK instead of assuming that I automatically knew what was wrong with my riding.

So, I had been using a JP bit with a copper roller.  At first Mia was quite pleased with the bit and she seemed to enjoy playing with the copper roller with her tongue.  But as time went on she got ever more reluctant to go on anything but the lightest contact.  When I first re-introduced the Dr. Bristol she seemed so much happier that I thought I had “solved” the problem, but the next ride showed me that I had not solved the problem at all.  So what could have happened?  Could Mia have injured her tongue?  Well, Mia has been gaining weight the past few months so I doubted that she had any cut on her tongue and I had not noticed any problems when we fed her grain after her ride when she licked the bottom of the bucket.  Then I remembered that the tongue has several muscles and up floated an idea, maybe Mia had slightly strained or bruised a muscle in her tongue playing with the copper roller, right where both bits rest upon her tongue.  This could explain her still being able to eat heartily and general objection to both bits.  Or maybe Mia had changed her mind and decided that she did not want the bit to press down on her tongue at all any more.

I decided the only way I could guarantee not to place any pressure on middle of her tongue was to go to a single jointed snaffle.  I don’t have many single jointed snaffles in my bit box (a nickel full cheek, a thick Fulmer snaffle, a copper/steel roller snaffle bit) but I finally remembered my JP Full Cheek single jointed snaffle that I had used on Glow around 7 years ago before I got my JP Dr. Bristol and figured out how to use it.  So I dug it out of my bit box and found the spur straps I had used as emergency bit straps for my Micklem bridle, my full cheek bit keepers, another pair of reins, and I put the single jointed bit on the her Micklem bridle to use on Mia on Friday.  While the middle joint of the snaffle would still press on her tongue when I kept contact, but it would press on the tongue in a DIFFERENT PLACE so I was really interested to see if she would keep contact any better than she had the last few months.  I also brought along my LightRider bitless bridle (a modified Scawbrig bitless) in case she had major objections to the new bit.

Mia was not too sure about her new bit at first, for one she had to open her mouth more so I could get it in her mouth.  After walking her around for a few minutes I tried contact, not the super-light contact I had been doing but just about a third of the contact that Cider found acceptable.  Mia immediately said NO!  So I loosened my reins, sent her on, and did some turns on the hindquarters and generally walked and trotted on sagging reins for a few minutes.  Then I cautiously asked for contact again at the walk, starting off on the super light contact while she explored how the new bit felt in her mouth.  Then the next time I asked for contact she reached out and took a slightly stronger contact with the bit.  Near the end of my ride I was encouraged enough with her contact to ask her to back up, and for the first time ever I had few problems in keeping her straight while backing up three full strides.  She got a LOT of praise for that!  Yes I still got some head flinging when Mia thought my contact was too hard, but I got only about a third of the head flinging as her last few rides and as she gained confidence in the comfort of the new bit she settled down and by the end of my ride she took stronger contact than she had in years.

Mia obviously had her mouth abused at some point in her life.  She DOES NOT like any bit with a curb chain for instance (as in when I tried a Kimberwick she flung her head about even before I took up contact.)  When I first thought about using a single jointed snaffle I was worried that she might have bad memories from being “broken” in a snaffle but figured if I used a JP single jointed bit it would feel different in her mouth than a normal single-jointed snaffle.  Mia LOATHES thick bits or I probably would have used my Fulmer snaffle which also feels different in the horse’s mouth than a normal snaffle bit.  I was trying to solve Mia’s new problem with the bits without bringing up any unpleasant memories of previous bad riding and without causing her any new discomfort in her mouth.  She was leery about the new bit at first but as she realized that 1) the pressure was on a different part of her tongue and 2) that the JP single jointed snaffle was much more comfortable in her mouth that any single-jointed snaffle previously used on her, she relaxed and gave me a chance to prove to her that being ridden in this bit was quite acceptable.

Of course Mia is a 28 year old Arab mare, picky, super sensitive, and very opinionated.  As horses age the head and mouth change as the incisors slant more and the molars get shorter and the jaw and palate bones shift.  Before my MS attack she had stopped improving in the JP Dr. Bristol which was one of the reasons I had changed to the JP copper roller full cheek.  Of course once I was in attack my whole body went to hell and my mind was not as sharp as usual and I was not capable of figuring out WHY Mia‘s contact was getting worse.  I was only riding Mia for a  few months and I figured her worsening objections to contact were due solely to my worsening hand tremors.  But once I got back to riding Cider and Mick (both in the JP Dr. Bristol) I realized that my hands had NOT deteriorated as much as I thought and that the other horses thought my contact was quite acceptable, hand tremors and all.  It was only then that I realized that Mia’s problems did not arise with me but with something changing in her mouth and that the first step to improvement was changing the bit.  I thought of going bitless but I have yet to find a bitless system that Mia accepts contact with.  She can get positively evil in protesting pressure on her nasal bone.  If I want to ride with contact with Mia I have to use a bit.

I am SO GLAD that my personal system of riding  does not include getting after the horse until the horse does exactly what I want it to.  If I had gotten after Mia for her worsening contact (like driving a lot more with my legs into ungiving hands) I would have unknowingly punished Mia for an age related problem that she had no control over and I probably would have caused her pain.  Over the decades I’ve been riding I have learned that any problem that I have with getting horses to obey me perfectly was generally caused by my ignorance, my sheer klutziness and general physical inability to ride properly, and my inability to “read” the horse right, so now when a horse misbehaves under me I blame myself first.  It is always obviously my fault, and when I improve the horse improves too.

But this time it WASN’T my fault, except to take several months to figure the problem out.  In the meantime I let Mia “get away” with all sort of horsie sins, dropping contact whenever she objected to it and being willing to just walk around the ring.  I worked on lengthening her walk, did lots of transitions within the walk (super slow, regular, slightly extended), did lots of turns using just my lower legs and thighs, and generally kept out of her mouth except when I took up gentle contact to give a promptly released rein aid.  A rider can ruin an Arabian’s mouth forever with just a few harsh rides.  Other kinds of horses and even some lines of Arabs give up and accept the abuse to their mouths, but this super-sensitive Arab mare will NOT.  But I will be rewarded for my patience, as long as Mia finds this bit acceptable I can re-start back where we were when her mouth started changing and continue to progress like we did before just as if there had been no interruption.

Until the next time she changes her mind about something.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran