Is Your Horse Bridle Lame?
Is your horse perfectly sound on the ground when lunging (no muscle soreness, nothing picked up by the vet, chiro, masseuse or acupuncturist), but as soon as you start riding, it’s lame?
It could be saddle fit, but it could also be bridle lame.
A bridle lame horse is sound on the ground, in the paddock and the saddle fit is fine. There’s no heat, no issues with the hooves or abscesses, looks fine and not muscle sore. The lameness only shows up when ridden and looks to be somewhere in the front end.
A horse becomes bridle lame when it has become restricted in movement due to bridle pressure. This can be because they aren’t stepping through properly underneath themselves from behind. It can be because they aren’t extending properly through the shoulder. It can also be from tightness through the neck and jaw, or some combination of all the above. It usually is the result of being asked for a frame before they are ready.
The working frame should be the result of good self carriage.
However, due to the emphasis put on the overall frame and picture in competitions, this process can be rushed and compromised for the marks. When the horse is worked from front to back instead of from the hind to the hand, it doesn’t learn how to move freely within the restriction of the frame, doesn’t distribute its weight evenly and doesn’t engage the core. Instead they will load their weight into one shoulder more than the other - and in some horses this can make them look lame. This results in an irregularity of the stride which short term make them look lame, but long term ridden like this will MAKE THEM lame.
The only way to correct this before permanent damage is done is to take their training back down the training scale and retrain them back into true self carriage. The complication to this is the fact that the horse has already been incorrectly trained to respond to a particular cue (put your head into a frame without engaging the core or distributing the weight equally through all four limbs), and you are now tasked with re-teaching these cues, allowing the horse to first learn to flex through the hind legs, lift through the core before placing its head into the frame.
And the only way to prevent Bridle Lameness is to train them correctly in the first place, no matter how long it takes.
