Double Bridle PROS AND CONS

This Olympian explains why it’s a useful tool for training and competing ... but it’s NOT for the green horse and rider.

A double bridle has two sets of reins and two bits: a bridoon, which is just a snaffle with smaller rings, and a curb, which has an unjointed mouthpiece and lever arms or shanks. The double, also called a full bridle, is generally considered proper equipment for a trained horse and rider because it increases nuance, subtle communication and control. The double is required at the FEI (International Equestrian Federation) levels—Prix St. Georges through Grand Prix—and is optional at US Equestrian Federation’s Third and Fourth Levels.

Why the Double?
With a plain snaffle such as you use at the lower levels, you generally have to ride with lower, wider hands and almost constantly soften, soften, soften to create lateral flexion and keep your horse’s poll flexed.

With a double, the curb serves to keep your horse consistently lighter with his poll flexed and his nose down. This means that you don’t have to do as much with the bridoon, and your hands can be quieter, higher and closer together. They’re not holding any weight, so you stay more elegant and relaxed with an erect upper body. You can focus more on riding your horse free and very soft.

With little more than the weight of the rein on the curb, your horse moves up to a very light connection and chomps the bit. He tends to respect the double bridle more than the snaffle, because it makes you just a little more “alpha,” so he doesn’t question your authority and misbehave as much. He knows that you can stop him, and he can’t come off the bit or yank you out of the saddle, so he doesn’t even try. As a result, he’s mentally more at peace.

But the Curb Can Be Very Severe
If the reins are in the wrong hands or a horse isn’t ready for the double bridle according to the levels of the Training Scale, the double can damage his mouth and ruin him.

You must have an independent hand and seat and understand the very different but complementary actions of the two bits and reins. He should be able to consistently move uphill over his back, keep his shoulders and neck elevated and stay in front of your leg. Otherwise, when you activate the curb, he’ll lower his neck, drop his shoulders, fall even more onto his forehand and break at the third vertebra instead of flexing at the poll. And if he’s at all behind your leg, the double bridle will just back him off even more. (If he has a very light, sensitive mouth, the curb could be a career-stopping nightmare—always too much bit for him).

What’s more, with the two different bits available in a zillion designs, thicknesses, materials and adjustments, a double bridle is extremely difficult to fit correctly. Even a very knowledgeable professional spends a lot of time and effort finding, trying, combining and twiddling the parts of a double bridle to keep her horse happy and his mouth quiet. To find out why, just keep reading.

The Double Dissected

The Bits You work the bridoon—which puts pressure on your horse’s tongue and lips—just as you work a snaffle: to ask him to bend, make his jaw soft and place his head at the correct level. By contrast, you don’t really “work” or manipulate a curb. You just touch the reins, and it induces and maintains flexion at the poll by affecting the bars, palate, poll and chin groove. Too much curb will cause your horse to overflex; too little curb will allow him to come above the bit.

At the national levels, the bridoon can be a single- or double-jointed loose ring, eggbutt or Baucher. The mouthpiece must be no less than 3/8 inch in diameter at the rings, although it can be a little less for a pony. The length of the curb’s lever arm must not exceed 10 centimeters (approximately 4 inches) below the mouthpiece. If the mouthpiece slides, the lever arm must not measure more than 10 centimeters when the mouthpiece is at the uppermost position. In general, the longer the lever arm, the more severe the curb. Both bridoon and curb must be smooth and made of metal or rigid plastic with a solid surface, although either may be covered with rubber. These days you can get bits made of terrific alloys that encourage a horse to salivate more, which helps to keep his mouth moist and his tongue down.

The curb chain passes under your horse’s chin and acts as a fulcrum so his jaw is compressed between the curb bit and chain, which is what creates the pressure on his poll through the bridle’s crownpiece. The thinner the chain, the more severe and the greater the likelihood at, say, a four-day show that your horse will end up with sores under his chin. For a very sensitive horse, you can use a leather strap instead of a chain, and there are rubber, leather, neoprene and gel curb-chain covers. Even the hooks that attach the chain to the curb need attention. With daily riding, the ones that usually come with the bit can gradually bend in and eventually pinch or put holes in your horse’s lips. You must constantly monitor them and bend them back out again, or, you can do what I do and replace them with the new, nonpinching, nonbending rubber-covered flat hooks.

Bit Fit and Adjustment
Many horses have cramped mouths and fairly low palates. While fatter bits might seem kinder, they may actually create pain or discomfort by crowding a mouth. And very thin bits that may fit in there better are more severe. A very thin curb, especially, can bruise your horse’s bars, while a low port can squish his tongue and encourage him to draw it up or over the mouthpiece. A high port, however, can bruise or injure his palate and cause him to gape his mouth in pain.

If the bridoon is too wide, it can hang down and get caught over the curb. When you activate the curb, its port will press the “nutcracker” hinge of the bridoon into his palate. If the bridoon is too narrow, the rings will crush his cheeks against his teeth. And if it’s double-jointed, it’s possible to pull the joint into the corner of his mouth and bruise or lacerate his lip.

The curb has to be narrow enough to hold your horse’s lips in, or they’ll slip out and fold up so the lining gets pinched between curb and curb chain. But it can’t be so narrow that the lever arms pinch the lips instead of holding them. A curb that I like, even though it is no longer in fashion, has “S”-shaped lever arms, and is particularly good for horses with “cushy” lips. It won’t pinch, and because it has a slightly longer shank above the mouthpiece, it works a little more on the poll, which seems to be effective with insensitive horses and stallions.

I adjust a bridoon slightly higher than an ordinary snaffle so—and this is a HUGE point—the bridoon and the curb are well separated and won’t get hung up on each other. Even the adjustment of the curb chain is an art. If it’s too loose, it will allow too much rotation of the curb so the port goes straight up, damages the palate and you end up with a lot of mouth-gaping. If the chain is too tight, it allows inadequate room for the tongue and is unrelievedly severe. As little as one link can make the difference.

The Bridle
The double or full bridle itself, which is also known as a “Weymouth,” attaches the curb by the headstall and the bridoon by a narrow strap called a “bridoon hanger.” The bridle also has a cavesson (drop, flash or figure-eight cavessons are illegal) that should be well-padded and not overly wide or you could pinch your horse’s cheek or lip between the bridoon mouthpiece and the cavesson, even if you put the cavesson right up to your horse’s cheekbones. Because one of the curb’s actions is to exert pressure on the poll, it is best if the crownpiece is padded or cut back, especially if your horse has sensitive ears.

The curb rein should be narrow, smooth and plain so it constantly reminds you to not overuse it. In contrast, the snaffle rein should be rubber-lined, rubber-covered or laced so it has enough grip not to slip. This is because your horse won’t lean on the curb—it’s just too severe. So if the snaffle rein isn’t sufficiently grippy, he’s far more likely to pull it through your hand, which would leave you dangerously on the curb alone.

Holding the Reins
I know of at least six rein holds, and there are very fine-tuned leverage, control and contact reasons for each of them. In this country, it is most common for the reins to cross on their way from the bits to your hand, so you’re actually holding the snaffle rein with three fingers over it (between your ring and little finger) and the curb rein with two fingers over it (between your third and the ring finger). For a normal horse and rider, this ensures that as you make minor flexing and bending motions with your hand, you have more effect on the gentler snaffle and less on the stronger curb.

Beyond this rein hold there are many variations—if you go to Europe, you’ll see people holding reins in all sorts of ways. For example, if you have a very hard-mouthed horse or a particularly thick-necked stallion, there are rein holds that allow a little more influence on the curb. If you’re on a very light-mouthed horse, there are rein holds that put you more on the snaffle. I’ve even used a 3 to 1 rein hold—both curb reins and a snaffle rein in one hand, and a snaffle rein in the other hand—on very light-mouthed horses, because it allows me to keep a contact on the curb, while at the same time reducing my use of it.

Finally, while you can always use one rein more than the other with a snaffle, with a curb it’s very important to keep both reins even and to use them equally. Otherwise, the curb will twist and the chain will pinch. It is also important that you maintain contact on the curb when competing or you’ll lose points because your horse isn’t showing “acceptance” of the bit. It doesn’t have to be a strong contact—it can be as light as the weight of the reins—but on every movement where one rein dangles or both reins hang loose, you’ll be penalized fairly severely.

By now, you must agree that the double bridle is not kid stuff. Still, there are ways to experiment with its feel and action without causing any of its problems (see “How to Get Started” page 49). And if and when you and your trainer decide that it’s time for the double bridle, you should have a basic understanding of its individual pieces and how and why they work together.

The Third Level Dilemma
Five years ago, I fought to get the double bridle allowed at Third Level. As a judge, trainer and competitor, I believed that on a lot of horses, you didn’t want to be doing high-powered movements like extended canter or flying changes in a snaffle. They’d get too strong and stop taking your half-halts! This wasn’t necessarily a problem at home where you could school it, but you couldn’t halt a horse in the show ring and say, “OK, Bud, you come back!”

A lot of our big, powerful Third Level horses were picking up on that, especially the increasing number of schoolmasters being bought and shown by amateurs. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden or owned a schoolmaster, but they’re pretty smart characters. A schoolmaster in a snaffle can get stronger and stronger and stronger as a test goes along, and by the end, you have 100 pounds in your hands and he’s saying, “Tee hee, you can’t do anything to stop me because we’re in the show ring.” Along about then you have to do an extended canter across the diagonal, then try to collect and do a flying change before the corner, and he sticks his head in the air and says, “Ahhh, you sucker!”

So the double bridle seemed like a great way to make these big, powerful amateur horses showable. And as far as I was concerned, it was better for the riders to learn the intricacies of using the double at Third Level—where the tests were a little slower, so they had a chance to develop tactful effectiveness with the curb—than at Fourth Level, where the tests were much more difficult and the movements came up much faster.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who didn’t ride so well or have independent seats reached for the double to simply FORCE their horses’ heads down. What’s more, many of these horses were NOT uphill enough to make the move to Third Level. Ironically, it was usually the riders’ horrible bouncing that made the horses hollow their backs, stick their heads in the air and come off the bit in the first place. Without independent hands and seats, the riders were hanging on their curb reins for balance. The horses had their tongues jammed between two bits and there was no circulation. Their mouths would go numb, and they very quickly learned to either draw up their tongues or start sticking them out. If they were incredibly long-suffering, they went around in agony, and I can’t tell you how many blue or purple tongues I saw while judging.

Still, the reasons to keep the double bridle at Third Level were sound. So with the latest round of USEF dressage tests, we decided to send a message: We were going to discourage such abuse by increasing the rider coefficient from 2 to 3. If we saw a rider that had no business in a double bridle, we wouldn’t hesitate to give that rider a 4. What’s more, USEF is planning a system where riders need to get a certain number of good scores to move up through the levels. The first “gate” will be Second Level, Test Four. If a rider can’t do well there, he or she has no business using a double bridle at Third Level, and won’t even be allowed to try.

How to Get Started
The best way to get started riding with a double bridle, of course, is to take lessons on a schoolmaster under the supervision of a qualified instructor who can introduce you to the separate and combined feel and action of bit and bridoon. At home on your own, you can try what they often do to introduce the double to young riders in Europe: Put two reins on your snaffle. This won’t give you the feel of the curb’s action, but it will at least give you an idea of how to handle, control and balance two sets of reins. Draw reins can give you a semblance of the feel of the curb, but be careful! Draw reins can also produce many of the negative side effects of a curb. If you hang on them, you’ll pull your horse’s head down and break him at the third vertebra.