Since it's been cold and miserable here the last few weeks we've been doing ringwork and getting caught up on other little projects. Last week Felix had his teeth floated for the first time, which went well. He was not too bad, but had some points in there that needed it.
We also had the saddle fitter out a few weeks ago. Laura did a fantasic job on his adjustment, and I am very happy with the current fit. Still waiting for his crupper to arrive in the mail, but otherwise the adjustments she made are working out fantastically. If you've never had your saddle professionally fitted before I highly recomend it. The things that can look perfect to an untrained eye can still need a bit of tweaking. I also found out that my Isabell was not a good fit for him at all, so it's been sold and we have a brand new St. Lourdes on order.
Yesterday he got a short ride day being as we're all stuffed into a small indoor arena, but we played with bits for a while. He had been going in a fat copper snaffle, but as we ask him for more work with contact he's gotten progressively more unhappy, with a lot of head tossing. The float was the first step, but this did not 100% handle the problem, so we tried a couple more bits yesterday. The two he seemed to like that need more testing were a big fat stainless steel french link, and my narrow KK Ultra, so we will be keeping track of how he goes in these.
Do you know if its the tongue pressure that he dislikes? The kk will have less on the tongue, but more on the bars, where as the french link's the opposite. I love bits; so many fun options! And, similarly to saddle fit, can make such a huge difference in a horse's happiness.
ReplyDeleteBased on the head-flip reaction, I am strongly leaning towards the idea that the snaffle was poking him in the roof of the mouth.
ReplyDeleteBoth bits entirely eliminated the flipping - though i only needed a super light touch on the KK. I think I'm going to try out each one and see how they go long term.