Steadfast Equestrian Supply

✨ This weekend ✨

We will be at for Saturday & Sunday, 8am-4pm.

We're so excited for our first pop up of the year! 🤠

Who will we see there? 👀

** 🐟SALMON ARM, BC 🇨🇦**

I will be in your area 🤩 on May 30th at Topline Stables for a clinic weekend.

🌞 On Saturday we will start bright and early with my Basics of Bit & Bridle Fitting presentation at 8:30am and individual fittings will follow.

✔️ This presentation is designed to help riders better understand bit and bridle fit, how it impacts comfort and performance, how to recognize common signs of poor fit and adjust accordingly.

It’s a great opportunity to build your knowledge and feel more confident in your tack choices.

Audit fee: $75+ tax includes 2 hr presentation & question period, informational handouts, comfort checklists and morning refreshments 🥐🥐🥐

Please DM or email for consult pricing as it will vary depending on if you're riding at Topline or not.

I only have a handful of spaces for fittings on the 31st left. If you're interested in attending either please DM me or email [email protected] ✨

If you attended the livestream discussing bits this evening with myself and , welcome!

I mentioned that I had created some basic checklists for bit & bridle fit. These are them and they are certainly not exhaustive lists either.

The Bit Discomfort Checklist was created so that owners could go through and check off which bit evasions their horse was exhibiting. If they check off any, that is an indication that they may be experiencing some discomfort and should seek advice on how to improve bit fit

The Bridle Fit Checklist is a bit more complicated. This is a checklist of things that I would check on your horses bridle to optimize comfort. Meant to be more of a yes or no vs a check mark. Based on the answer, I would give advice in either direction. For more info about bridle fit you can reference my bridle fit reels that are pinned on my page.

And of course, following a basic checklist or online advice is not equivalent in any way to an actual bit & bridle fitting consultation. Oftentimes the situation requires way more information and context to provide adequate advice, which is why I have a job ☺️

These pieces of information are meant to be a jumping off point to recognizing the need for change in your bit & bridle set up. As well as, helping identify where the need is in some less complex cases ✨

Listen to the science my friends!

You don't need a tight noseband.

I received a comment from a client one day "oh we can't take off the flash or loosen the noseband, he will make horrible faces and gape his mouth"

I explained that the flash and tight noseband was a bandaid for the problem and essentially saying "I can see you're uncomfortable and it's ugly so let's hide it." But the thing is, she'd never been told that. Many of us haven't been.

I'm a big believer in "You don't know, what you don't know".

Strapping their mouth shut, is adding excessive pressure to their facial nerves and surrounding structures. It is also immobilizing the horses tongue and affecting the hyoid apparatus, which will affect your horses ability to use their hind end.

If you feel you need to because your horse is gaping its mouth, crossing its jaw, sticking its tongue out or over the bit.. take a pause and realize these are discomfort symptoms and we need to address the root cause of the problem so your horse can be comfortable. Once they are comfortable they will stop trying to evade the pressures.

Without the knowledge I don't expect people to change.

Kicker is, now that we have the knowledge, will equestrians listen to what their horses are telling us. Will they utilize the knowledge and improve their practices? I certainly hope so!

Strap Tighter, Move Shorter: Noseband Pressure and Stride Reduction

Noseband tightness has received increasing attention within equitation science, but there is still limited research examining how it affects horse behaviour or performance. This study aimed to measure peak pressure under the noseband in live horses at three different levels of tightness and to assess how noseband tightness influences limb and back movement. 🐴📊

Eight horses were tested, with noseband tightness set using the International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) taper gauge at three standardised settings: two fingers, one finger, and zero fingers. Peak pressure under the noseband was measured using pressure sensors, and motion capture technology was used to analyse limb and back kinematics. 🎥📏

Peak pressure increased as the noseband was tightened, with pressures at the one-finger and zero-finger settings showing increases of 54% and 338%, respectively, compared to the two-finger setting. As noseband tightness increased, stride length decreased, showing a significant negative relationship. On average, stride length decreased by 6.2% at the one-finger setting and by 11.1% at the zero-finger setting when compared to the two-finger setting. 📉

In conclusion, tightening the noseband increased peak pressure and had a negative effect on horses’ movement, particularly stride length.

The study had several limitations, including analysing movement only from the side, which captured forward–backward limb motion but not side-to-side or rotational movement, as well as unavoidable measurement error from skin movement and differences between horses in training level.

You can read this paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0737080625003120