Three Piece Bits The
differences matter
OK - so in preparing this article, I went down the
rabbit hole. I found like a g'zillion 3 piece
bits. Not all 3-piece bits are created equally.
Back in the day, there was a Dr. Bristol and a French
link. Now - yikes! And the names aren't even
consistent.
To spill the beans, my favorite bit is a loose ring 3-piece Dewsbury
link. I'm not sure these are available
anymore. There's a lot of things out there
saying they are Dewsbury links, but they don't look quite
right. Here's what one looks like:
The reason I like this bit is that it sits very softly
on the tongue. To figure out how that feels, hold the
bit in the palm of your hand with rings perpendicular to
your palm. In this pic, where the pink line is, that's the
tongue. Put your palm there and let the bit rest on
your palm. You will feel how smooth it is. It
'disappears' to the touch. When you see it from
above, you can see that the rings that hold the sausage run
parallel to the tongue and do not sit on the tongue at all.
Here's some other bits I found. The top ones might
be ok. The bottom ones are going to dig into the tongue
where the red arrows are. Some of this is by virtue
of the bar and some of it is by virtue of the middle
piece. (Some of the bottom bits are pretty pricey,
too, but I personally wouldn't use them.)
The new horse came with this bit:
It's a lovely bit. Except if you look at how it sits
on the tongue, there are 2 hot spots.
The bridle it came with had a crank nose band. (boo
hiss anyway.) Taking into consideration that this bit
digs into the tongue and she was being ridden with her mouth
cranked shut, is there any wonder problems developed? Basically,
every time she was being ridden she was being hurt, even if
the reins weren't being 'taken up' and she was on a loose
rein. It was up to the trainer involved to have side
stepped this.
What the trainer was responsible to have known is that (a)
nosebands are superfluous and (b) an immobile jaw is a
immobile horse.
Have you ever noticed that western horses behave quite well
without a nose band? So, is there an reason English
ridden horses couldn't behave quite well without them?
They were originally meant to prevent cavalry dudes from
breaking their horses' jaws -- ie reinforce the bone w/ some
leather. We aren't hauling on our horses like that
anymore. Or shouldn't be! My opinion is that they
are not necessary in today's world.
On a more technical note, when the jaw is unable to move,
the entire skeletal system is inhibited from movement.
Inhibiting movement is the opposite of what we're wanting in
horses. This is one of those things were it doesn't seem
like it should make that big of a difference, but it actually
makes a bit of a mess of things. Please avoid this!
When you go to pick out your next pick, feel it in the palm
of your hand and notice if it disappears or not. It
matters.
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