16/10/2025
It was a devastating moment that changed me forever, and was the reason I chose not to bit!
It happened at a riding clinic my horse was not yet backed so I would merely be looking from the side lines hoping to pick some tips. The rider in question was revelling in her riding abilities and her horse's prowess, albeit that she had brought him fully trained. The trainer was lauding her and everyone crowded around in a congratulatory hub. I remember watching her bring her horse out of the arena, sweated up and breathing very heavily from his exertions. She had just put her horse away in the box and returned to her group of well wishers when I heard the most horrendous commotion.
As I ran around to the box I saw the most dreadful sight. Her horse tied up in his trailer was frantically drumming his legs in a wild, bizarre, four-time rhythm as the trailer rocked back and forth, but this was no piaffe. As I rushed around to the front of the trailer to calm him, I saw a look on his face that would live with me forever and, as I said, was to change dramatically the course of my training of horses. It was a look of total abject fear and terror and absolute and complete agony as the whites in his eyes rolled upwards. I instantly looked into the truth of the situation. It was written all over the poor creature's face. Subjected as he had been to the constant application of the curb bit, his poll and neck flexed into a tight, unrelenting over flexed bend of at least an hour of intense training he simply could take no more. I knew the trainer would have given him no quarter or rest, eager as he was to impress the others in the clinic and his silly rider would have gone along with things eager to impress also. This poor wretched horse now was paying the price, agonisingly opening and closing his mouth in abject pain in such a twisted, jerky fashion, his only release to explode in this fashion. His rider below momentarily turned from the group she was with and her congratulations and came to see what the commotion was all about. The trainer came too and, in a show of mock sincerity, tried to comfort the poor horse in a loud stage voice so that everyone could hear. I thought he would not be in this place now if you had not pushed him to the point of no return. I was appalled and disgusted that they could take so much with so little regard for the sentient being they were taking from.
But more than anything that moment was one of the greatest watershed moments of my life. It was as they say once seen you can never un see. It dismantled every culturally accepted convention that I had about training horses. All the things I had told myself and all the carefully crafted narratives in my head of the right things to do with my young horse. All fell like a mountain being demolished.
After seeing the appalling agony of the horse ridden on the curb and the blithe use of double bridles in young horses and mean-looking accoutrements by many of the riders I knew, I could no longer bit my young horse. In truth, he had been compliant and accepted the bit, in my first introductions to it in the stable, but I knew he also didn't like it. I would watch how he would sigh in relief after I took his bridle off, flex his jaw, and then rubbed his mouth on the door frame of his stable in relief. I was no harsh owner and took extreme care to treat him tenderly, but in truth, I knew if I was to live by the ethos and values I had demonstrated so far with him, I could not place such a coercive instrument upon him. People said to me, Oh don’t worry his mouth will harden up. But I didn’t want it to harden, that lovely soft doughy mouth that had crinkles in the corner, that lovely mouth I so relished kissing.
This wonderful free spirit who had come into my life and who was utterly compliant with not a line upon him in the school, I knew if I was to stand by my ethos, I could not now constrain him with such and instrument. This was before the days of any acceptance of bitless riding and I knew I would be subject to criticism if not out right ridicule; regulated to being a crazy horse whisperer type. But something in my heart spoke to me crystal clear, NO! I could not, must not go down this path with him. I had to find some alternative, even if I had to mock one up.
But I didn't have to; I found a commercial type of cross under that guided rather than constrained with no poll or nose pressure. When I tried it my horse demonstrated his agreement in the affirmative, walking freely out on an afternoon hack; I could feel his consent as he listened to my seat and minor vibrations down the reins for directions. In truth this manner of riding fitted neatly into my Legrette ethos of separation of the aides and descent of them completely. I was looking for a nuanced manner of communication rather than a constant maintenance that I seen in the clinic. I wanted to leave him entirely alone with no aiding other than my seat and presence.
When I watched in his stable afterwards, he did what he always did when he was content; he would stand still looking into the distance outside, deeply inside himself contemplating, yet giving off a palpable energy field of contentment and stillness, encompassing anyone fortunate to be in its vicinity. I knew I had made the right choice.
However, as I reflected upon what had happened the previous day, it was apparent to me that so many people's sole reason and base motivation for interacting with horses was what the horse could do for them: how much higher they could jump, how many more transitions could they get out of them. All done to extricate that little bit more out of them for their own profile and status until the coffers were empty, so to speak, like the poor horse the day before left discarded in abject pain and terror. I also realised that you cannot keep taking because if you do, you risk eroding and destroying a relationship that should be reciprocal with a mutual interest for both parties. I knew and accepted that whenever I came close to demanding of my horse, the shutters came down, and I found myself out in the cold. But when I gave supporting him, listening and considering him, whatever situation we were in, he acquiesced right back at me by softening his body and attitude and listening to me.
At the clinic, I saw a number of horses whose spirits, to put it mildly, were broken. They shook when you went up to them; one owner even had the affront to refer to her poor horse as 'IT'. I was appalled and heartbroken. I thought they would have done this to my lovely horse if he had got into the wrong hands. Would he have had his spirit broken in the same way? Sadly, it seemed for some, the only way of controlling and getting what they wanted from a horse was by breaking its spirit. As I pondered further I realised some breeds of horses like my own were uniquely gifted athletically and targeted for these things by people who wanted but never gave. Surely, I thought George Sand was right, 'Vanity is the quicksand of reason'.
A few months later, after I had successfully backed my horse myself, the rider who had been so unknowingly instrumental in helping me make my choice watched me mount up to set off for a ride, she started to comment on my new bridle then stopped, her mouth hung open, unable to articulate or consciously apprehend what she was seeing. The impossibility of my actions, riding without a bit to constrain my horse, confounded her mind, so much that she just stood there stricken dumb as I mounted up and left her there open-jawed as we rode off.
As much as her riding was based upon technique and tools, I knew mine was based upon relationship and connection. As I pondered our future, I wondered how we would survive in the competitive, egotistical, technique-based horse world around us. I knew I could never break faith with my horse to feed the demands of human desires. I had established an enduring bond with him that I had to honour. He was my companion and my friend, his choice mattered as much as my own. The place of intuitive learning and joining of consciousnesses he had opened for me was holy and something I could never violate.
‘The ‘Mystic Horse Guru’
‘More Meditations from the Mystic Horse Guru’
‘The Spiritual Horse’
Aanna Barard