There are three levels of horse bridles that should be used in the beginning stages, including a snaffle bit, a correction bit and a jointed bit. Learn about the movements that these bits influence with helpful advice from a reining horse trainer in this video on horse bridles and bits.
Now that my horse is prepared, we're ready to ride. He understands who I am and what the position is and we have a respect for each other. I'm going to pick out a piece of equipment that I'm going to ride him with. This is going to go on his head, in his mouth, it allows me to have control over him and I'll show you the exercises once we get it on. But there's four, basically three levels of bridles that I would use on a horse in the beginning. First stages of briding, I would use what's called a snaffle bit. "Lynn, if you would mind holding him too." The snaffle bit, the reason it's called a snaffle, is because it's actually jointed in the middle, alright and has no shake on it. The range are attached right to a ring that is attached to the mouthpiece, alright, and it's a nice jointed mouthpiece. Now, that gives me a lateral control with each hand, right to the corner of a horse's mouth. Alright. And in the beginning levels of teaching your horse direction, and going left and right and responding to your hands, these work out beautifully. And then as we progress through the stages of development of the horse, we go on to other levels of bridles. The next one I would go to, is also a jointed bit but it's not a snaffle. It is what's called a correction bit. Now it gets a bad rep because of the name. You know people go, "Oh correction bit." But actually, you notice that it too has a snaffle action, it's jointed but now it's starting to have a little bit of a port to it. Now that port actually is where his tongue will lay in. Alright. That's what the port is for. It releases the pressure off of the horse's tongue and now these are riding on the bars. These are actually called the bars of the bit. There's the bars in the horse's mouth. Now in his mouth, there's a space between his teeth where this is going to ride on. There's a gap and you know, right toward the back of his mouth where all the teeth are, where there are no teeth actually and so the bit rides perfectly in there.
