As Brendan Wise gallops his horse Villanueva Conrad over towering jumps, he could be any other show jumper in shiny tall boots and a crisply tailored competition jacket, except one thing is missing: Not only are there no reins in his hands, a part of an equestrian kit usually deemed essential for steering a horse, in fact there is no bridle on its head at all. And, most crucially for Wise, no metal bit is in the animal’s mouth.
To the average rider — for whom steering a horse or controlling its velocity by gently tugging on a piece of metal between its molars is without exception the way horseback riding gets done — Wise’s feats with his horse, also known as Lyric, seem an impossibility. How could he possibly control his mount without the metal bar on its gums, which for thousands of years people have used to tell horses what to do?
For Wise, the rare rider who has taken bitless riding from its humble status as a circus trick to the highest echelons of equestrian sport, his rides are part of a mission to question accepted practices.
“Do I think bits are bad? No,” Wise said in an interview in May. “But it does raise the question of: If you can get the same results without it, then why use it?”
He and Lyric compete at the Grand Prix level, over jumps as high as 1.40 meters. He steers with only the pressure of his legs on the horse’s sides and a circle of rope loosely around the horse’s neck that he tugs left, right, or back to tell Lyric to slow down. While Wise is not always the winner, that’s not the point.
“If I can do it at that level without a bridle, then maybe a couple of people take a look and say, ‘Hmm, maybe I can do better. Maybe I can be softer,’” he said. “It’s a perfect way to push the industry.”
While Wise is one of the few riders to put bitless show jumping into practice, he is not alone in his thinking. A shift is at hand, sport officials and horse welfare experts say, reflecting a growing trend across the sport that has now swept in practices as ancient as using a bit.
New scientific studies examine dental morphology on bitted horses and even seek to quantify a horse’s happiness with a bit in its mouth. Old rules mandating certain bits in competition are being questioned, and bit makers are looking both to the past and to new technology to find better ways to control a horse.
In an industry that has faced abuse scandals, and where even the minutiae of animal welfare are being examined, the discourse has today begun to tackle what was once seen as the most essential and immutable of riding tools.
The shift appears to be catching on globally. Early this year, in response to public pressure to a mandate that the upper levels of dressage, the balletic horse sport, must use what is known as a double bridle with a lever-style bit, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, the sport’s international governing body, started a working group to dig into the issue. Some see double bridles as essential for the almost-invisible control needed at the highest levels. Others see them as overly harsh and easy to abuse.
Denmark has considered a ban on double bridles as well as curb bits, which use a chain under the chin. In February, the House of Representatives of the Netherlands backed a proposal that would ban “all animal-unfriendly” horse equipment, which appeared to include bits. In March, Jharkhand, in Eastern India, barred spiked bits, joining several other Indian municipalities.
“We are constantly reviewing bits as new bits and materials are developed,” David O’Connor, the United States Equestrian Federation’s chief of sport, said in a statement. “Research is leading us to think about bitting differently than in the past.”
Bits date as far back as when people first began riding horses, about 2000 B.C., according to William Taylor, who has a doctorate in anthropology and is the author of “Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History,” and they were likely made of organic material, such as leather. They persisted for about 1,000 years until the invention of the metal snaffle, or jointed bit, he said, a sharper device likely created to compel spirited horses into battle.
Horse dentition has uniquely allowed for bits — they have a space between their canines and cheek teeth where a bit can rest on the gums, known as the “bars” of the mouth. Archaeological digs have revealed bone spurs on ancient horse jaws from where harsh bits hit, Taylor said.
“If you zoom out and you look at the multiple millennia-long trajectory, there is an obvious improvement in the optimization of the control systems that people use for horses,” he said. “There are changing preferences for things that cause a little bit less harm, but we use horses in ways socially are different now than they were 500 years ago — in a way that the priorities have changed too.”
Of course, the vast majority of equestrians do not question bits; and a wholesale shift away from centuries of accepted practice is unlikely, if not impossible. But some researchers have put conventional beliefs to the test.
Karen Luke, a psychology and animal welfare researcher based in Melbourne, Australia, examined rider safety outcomes in bitted vs. bitless horses. Luke, who has a doctorate in philosophy, found no evidence that bits increased the safety of the rider; if anything, horses in her study without bits exhibited fewer distress behaviors, like bucking.
“The conversation is definitely heading toward people being more curious and open to exploring: Can we ride safely without bits?” Dr. Luke said in an interview. “And I think that what my study shows is that.”
At its headquarters in Iserlohn, Germany, the company Herm. Sprenger, a bit maker since 1872, keeps a reference library of antique bits, including crude medieval designs and a 16th-century bit of possible Italian or German origin with the surprisingly humane technology of a hollow mouthpiece for lightness.
Sprenger bits are created iteratively by engineers who work with professional riders, testing models for horse comfort and performance, said Martin Sprenger, the executive director and a fifth-generation bit maker.
To him, it is not bits that are inherently problematic, but their potential for misuse. A bit designed for an Olympian to use with subtlety and skill, can, at the hands of a novice, inflict pain if improperly deployed, he said.
“From our philosophy, we try to design the bits to make communication better,” Sprenger said. “But that also depends on the rider, how good he is and open for communication.”
To achieve this, the company sends emissaries worldwide, like Heiko Koch, its expert on horse physiology and bitting biometrics, to conduct clinics on how to properly fit and use the tools. This spring, Koch is giving how-to sessions on bitting up and down the East Coast of the United States, including at horse shows in Tryon, N.C., Devon, Pa., and Manhattan Saddlery, a tack shop in New York City.
For David Elliott, a bit maker from Fort MacLeod, Alberta, the evolution of thinking about horse welfare means that today’s bits are highly sophisticated tools that, used correctly, can instruct a horse without the brute force used in the hulking, coarse bits of the past.
To perfect his bits, which are mostly for the Western sport of barrel racing, a speed sport where the instantaneous communication through the reins between horse and rider can spell the difference between a win or last place, Elliott studies antique cavalry texts and autopsies cadaver horses to keep learning about how the muscles and sinews engage.
“In the beginning, bitting was physical — we’re going to make our horse stop, or we’re going to make him turn,” Elliot said. “But the refinement and the education part, to me, is the best part.”
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York … and sometimes beyond.
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