Dartmoor Ponies

Here at aBitSpecial.com as you can imagine we get a wide variety of different enquiries about custom bits for particular needs.  Sometimes the challenge is to address behavioural issues and sometimes they are physical.  This is one interesting story about one of our customers Dan.  Dan drives Dartmoor ponies in Combined Driving Events. For those of you that don't know and I am by no means an expert, Combined Driving is a carriage based event where the driver and possibly others are drawn by 1, 2 or 4 horses.  Needless to say there is a decent looking account of the sport on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_driving

Now in Dan's case he drives with Dartmoor Ponies (see the picture he kindly sent us below).

Dan says - "I have 3 ponies each with their own special needs and issues in each of the three phases of the events. Complicating all of this is their physical characteristics - wide shallow mouths and small heads (they are 12.1H tall)"

The horse bit market is characterised by a lot of different types of bit however like cars they tend to be mass produced to fit the most common range of horse sizes and dimensions.  We hear from people who have trouble finding very large bits with good stopping power but also smaller bits where the bit mouth piece may be OK but the rest of it is just not in proportion. 

As Dan then says "Most bits that are wide enough are too bulky to
look right and too thick for their mouths. Smaller bits pinch."

Dan had some quite specific requirements and we worked closely with him to build some bits that worked well for him.  It seems just as we get to a point when we think we have made most bits we can think of, another requirement crosses our path.

"I came to A Bit Special with a request for a Happy Mouth Mullen mouthpiece attached to a 2 slot fixed cheek pony sized liverpool bit. 2 weeks later I had it and it was perfect. Then I asked for the mouthpiece from a Dr. Bristol bit except with the link twisted (a French link lozenge is too bulky) 90 degrees and attached once again to a fixed cheek liverpool in pony size. Once again they came through. I am in the process of ordering 4 more and expect that by the end of this year every Dartmoor driver in the US will have this bit. "

You can see a few more pictures of the Liverpool bit here Fixed Cheek Horizontal Lozenge bit

It is not always easy to get the the right solution when horses are involved but we are always keen to give it our best shot.