As some of you may have seen, over the last few months I’ve had the wonderful Kirstie from Forelock and Load helping me find a suitable dressage bit for Elle. Head over to their Bitting Advice for more details.
Elle is EXTREMELY light in the contact in 99% of bits, although she may look and appear round, to ride she gives absolutely no feeling down the rein, because she is reluctant to take a confident contact forward. Because of this, she had a tendency to drop behind the vertical or have a slightly higher frame and when tension came into play, because she wouldn’t seek a contact forward and out. She would lock through her back and the rhythm would simply quicken to a more ‘up-down’ action, rather than flowing forward, relaxed and out in the neck. Thankfully because I’ve had her for 3 and a half years, I have always known how to disguise the flaws in a test but because we had started to ‘up our game’ recently, I was really desperate to find something she felt more secure in as it was stopping us from progressing in our training.
Kirstie went up and beyond to help find a suitable bit for Elle, we had many discussions and a few trials of bits but then came across the new Moulded Mullen Bombers Bits and I hope you can see the difference speaks for itself!
Elle always used to feel like she was trying to ‘reset’ the bit in her mouth, if I did start to get any inkling of her taking a small contact forward, she would then move the bit in her mouth, meaning we kept finding ourselves in a vicious circle of struggling to establish a consistent contact. In the Moulded Mullen she is far stiller, less chomping and opening her mouth of the bit, she is a lot more through, over her back and out in the neck and she is generally a lot more relaxed. The canter still has a little progress to be made, because now she is taking a contact and she’s actually gone a tiny bit pokey nose in her canter work. This means I’m having to ask her to work a little bit rounder- which is a far better place to be than her being backwards and tucked in from the contact!
Thank you Kate for such a lovely write up and we hope it helps some other horses and riders who might be reading. We look forward to watching you and Elle over the summer.
