As most of you know, I have never been one to endorse or sell tack of any kind. And for the most part, I still don’t. However, recently a bit has come to our attention that we feel can be quite helpful for a number of horses…So much so that after much thought and deliberation, we have decided to carry a few of them for folks that are interested.

Here’s how the bit came to our attention:

First, I should say we get a lot of people and businesses who send us various horse related items. They usually want us to try the items out and see if we like them. For the most part these items are usually pretty nice, some are very innovative, and others aren’t really worth mentioning. Yet, with all of these items, even though some may be quite beneficial to the average horse owner, I have just never felt comfortable enough with any of them to offer an all out endorsement.

Then in the fall of 2004, this fellow named Mark Sulan called from Illinois and asked if I would be interested in having a look at a bit that he had designed. At the time the bit had only been on the market for two years. He called the bit “The Rockin S Snaffle” (see the description above) and said he was having a lot of success with it, using it on horses who were notoriously troubled with traditional bits. I told Mark the same thing I tell everybody else - - I would be happy to take a look at the bit, as long as he understood there would be no strings attached. He agreed, and a few days later I received the bit in the mail.

Now, Mark claimed this particular bit was extremely helpful with horses who “worried” the bit, tossed their head, rooted, or who were just very resistant to the bit in general.  Yet, when I opened the package and took the bit out, I couldn’t see a whole lot of difference between it and any other snaffle I had ever seen with the exception that the cheek pieces on this bit were somewhat different. I couldn’t really see how this bit could possibly do what Mark claimed it could, and as a result (and without giving the bit, or Mark’s claims of the bit’s previous successes much thought), I pretty much dismissed it out of hand, put it back in the package and placed the package on a shelf, with the myriad of other items I had received over the years. In the back of my mind I decided I would give the bit a try at some point, as I told Mark I would, but I certainly wasn’t in any hurry.

Most folks who send me things do so, and then I never hear from them again. But this situation was different. Once or twice a month, Mark would call me to see if I had gotten a chance to try the bit. Each time he called I would truthfully tell him I hadn’t, mostly due to the fact that the majority of my horses were all out on pasture for the winter, and I wasn’t riding any of them at the time. The one horse I did keep at home I didn’t ride in a bit, but rather a bosal. He said he would call back…and he did.

Months passed, and the phone calls from Mark continued. The following spring, when our horses came in from pasture, I finally tried the bit on my horse Smokey. As I expected, I didn’t really see a whole lot of difference in his behavior.

“There,” I thought to myself.

At least now I could tell him I had tried the bit. The results I found were not what he claimed they would be and now maybe he would stop calling.

A few days later Mark called again, and I gave him the news…

“Oh,” there was a discernable note of disappointment in his voice. “That’s strange. We’ve seen a big difference in pretty much every horse we’ve used it on.” There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Maybe it’s because your horse didn’t have any trouble with bits in the first place.”

“Maybe,” I replied.

“Oh well,” he said. “Thanks for giving it a try.”

And with that we said our good-bys. The phone calls from Mark stopped on that day.

Now normally that would be the end of the story. And it would have been except for a couple little things. One was the fact that I just couldn’t seem to get it out of my head how persistent Mark had been that I try the bit. Another was how disappointed he sounded when I told him I hadn’t seen any difference in the horse I had used it on.  You see, I believe when folks send me something that doesn’t work the way they claim, they already know it doesn’t work and so they usually aren’t all that persistent about getting feedback.  But that hadn’t been the case with Mark.

One other thing that kind of bothered me a little was I kind of knew I hadn’t really given the bit an honest try. As Mark had guessed, Smokey wasn’t really a horse that had trouble with bits in his mouth in the first place, and so I probably wasn’t going to see a whole lot of difference with him anyway.

All of these things sort of ate away at me over the next few months. Not in a big way, mind you, but rather as a sort of low level annoyance somewhere in the back of my mind.

Finally, a few months later at the end of our summer weeklong clinic schedule, I decided to give the bit a try on a horse we had been using all summer. This particular horse was pretty soft and willing most of the time, but he had also been struggling with a few nagging little issues all summer. One issue was his propensity to try to take pretty much anybody who rode him to the gate or back to the barn when he felt like he was finished working for the day. The other was to occasionally brace up big time when someone asked him to back up or turn.  Again, these things didn’t happen all the time, but they did happen to one degree or another with pretty much anybody who rode him.

Before the final weeklong clinic began, I put the bit on his headstall. I did not tell the man who was going to be riding the horse anything about the bit, or the trouble the gelding had been having all summer. Rather I just let the man ride him and see what transpired. Incredibly, right from the start the little gelding showed absolutely no signs of any of the issues he had been struggling with all summer long. He was soft and supple from the get-go and the two times he did offer to head to the gate were so half hearted they seemed hardly worth the effort. After that, he never even tried again for the rest of the week. 

Thinking this was perhaps just a fluke, I took the bit on the road with me and used it on a few horses at the next four clinics we did. Surprisingly enough, I saw similar results with each of the eight horses we tried it on. In each case, the horses had either been bracey, resistant, head tossers, or just not happy with bits in general and in each case we saw dramatic improvements within a matter of minutes. The horses became quiet, willing and much less fussy with their heads and mouths, and then continued to go that way and even improve as the days passed.

I was so impressed that even though I had originally dismissed the bit and hadn’t really even given it a fair chance, I felt compelled to call Mark back and tell him that I had, indeed seen the results with the bit that he said I would see.

Since that time, we have tried it on an extremely wide variety of horses and breeds all with “bit related” issues both here and in England, and the results have been pretty compelling (providing the issue wasn’t actually pain related). We have seen vast improvements in almost every horse we have tried it on to date, with the exception of a small handful. In those cases, the improvement, while still there, wasn’t as dramatic, and in one or two horses, such as Smokey, we saw no measurable improvement at all.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I am not claiming this bit is an end all to all bit related problems or that it’s a magic bullet of any kind. No piece of tack can take the place of good horsemanship and diligent and consistent work between horse and rider. However, the way the bit is designed it does seem to help troubled horses calm down enough to where they can begin to think about what is being asked of them, which in turn does seem to help the communication process.

Unfortunately, right now the bit is not being carried by very many tack stores and as a result we have decided to stock a few of them to make it easier for folks to get a hold of them if they are interested. Please note, there are no returns on used bits.