Bridle again

I put the bridle on BG again last night, that can’t do anything to affect her soundness so is one of the few things I felt I could do. It had been a while since I last did it, and last time we had a fight getting the bit in her mouth, and she has had her teeth rasped since then. It went better than I expected.

The bridle went on, then I popped my fingers in the corner of her mouth to encourage her to open it and this was when she started to pull her head away and turn towards her corner. It didn’t take too long to put the bit in though so I was quite pleased. When I first held it up to her mouth she wasn’t keen, but I realised I was holding it where the gap was in her lips, which is actually near the bottom of her lower set of teeth. When I moved it up a bit so it was near the gap in her teeth it went in straight away with no fuss.

I led her round in it a little which didn’t go so well. She was pulling ahead and trying to run round me and I don’t like to tug too much on the reins, so I need to do some more in-hand so she is responding to voice commands better again.

The bridle came off with minimal fuss too which was nice. The bit popped out and she didn’t try clamping her teeth on it and scaring herself when it got to half way out. Then she doesn’t like the bridle being taken off over her ears, she tends to pull back quite dramatically, but she only did a little jolt back with her head. So all in all reasonably successful.

She still looked sore on the hard ground this morning unfortunately. It was very hot and when I led her out to the field once she had had her breakfast, and I took her head collar off, she was very sweet just standing there with me. She made no move to graze, just stood there with her head so close to mine that her coat was tickling my face.