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WHY IS A BIT AN IMPEDIMENT TO A HORSE? By W. Robert Cook. F.R.C.V.S., Ph.D., Professor of Surgery Emeritus, Tufts University, School of Veterinary Medicine Copyright © Robert Cook A metal bit is an invasive foreign body in a sensitive body cavity. It controls a horse through a mixture of pain, poll flexion and partial suffocation. It also causes a host of other problems. The pain or possibility of pain gets the horse's attention but can also induce the horse to take avoiding action by opening its mouth and grabbing the bit between its teeth. When this happens, the rider's safety is in jeopardy. Mouth pain also induces problems such as stumbling, rearing, bucking and headshaking. It can spoil a horse's attitude to exercise, rendering a horse both unhappy and unhelpful. Poll flexion brought about by the bit obstructs the horse's airway and moves the horse's point of balance forward, so that more weight is taken on the forelegs. Habitual leaning on the bit locks-up the cervical spine and destroys that freedom of the neck so essential to an athlete. It also reduces hind limb propulsion and the effectiveness of some important energy saving mechanisms that depend on neck mobility. (See: A Note on the Head Bob) The bit induces reflex salivation and chewing, which are responses appropriate to eating not exercising. The chewing reflex invokes lip, tongue and jaw movement, all of which are physiologically incompatible with exercise and rapid breathing. Eating and exercising are two diametrically opposed activities that should never take place concurrently in any animal. Children know, instinctively, that they cannot both eat and run. Yet we are expecting just this when we place one or more bits in a horse's mouth. How would readers like to run a race with a bunch of keys in their mouth? Although a horse is in no danger of swallowing the bit, it may well "swallow its tongue", displace its soft palate, inhale saliva or precipitate a spasm of its larynx. All these problems are associated with an episode of "choking-up" or asphyxia. Asphyxia, in turn, is the cause of pulmonary "bleeding" in racehorses. Because the tongue is attached to the larynx, when the tongue moves so does the larynx. If the larynx is shifting about during exercise, this interferes with the free flow of air. Similarly, as the soft palate rests on the root of the tongue, any movement of the tongue causes movement of the soft palate. This, in turn, leads once again to obstruction of the airway, inspiratory stridor ("roaring") and asphyxia from dorsal displacement of the soft palate. As breathing and striding are mechanically and physiologically coupled and the galloping horse takes one stride for every breath, any interference with breathing inevitably interferes with striding. The gait loses its natural grace and rhythm, and the stride becomes shorter. In racing, shorter strides equate to slower speeds. In addition, the forehand becomes heavier and so the risk of breakdown is higher. Finally, in horses both young and old, the bit is the cause of many common oral and dental problems, such as buccal ulcers, sore lips, bruised gums, wolf tooth irritation and lacerations of the tongue,. All three P's, the problems, the pain and the poll flexion are more fully described in my article "Pathophysiology of Bit Control in the Horse". All three P's can be avoided by eliminating the bit. The good news is that the horse can now be effectively controlled without a bit, using a fundamentally new design of bitless bridle. Unlike the bit, it controls predominantly by means of painlessly-induced poll pressure rather than by painfully-induced poll flexion. It pushes inoffensively rather than pulls traumatically. The mechanism of its action relies on two head loops, one over the poll and one over the nose. Together, they give the rider benevolent control of the whole of the head. The new bridle is now marketed as the Bitless Bridle. |
All photographs and diagrams courtesy of W.R. Cook |
