(Happy Mouth Bits):
"When I'm training the youngsters, I like to put them in a Happy Mouth.
Happy Mouth is a whole line of bits that came out, I don't know, I'm old, 20 years ago, and we love them.
All of us love them so much that Happy Mouth as a company made pretty much every damn bit you can imagine in a Happy Mouth.
They look like this.
We definitely support Happy Mouths.
We love them and you can get pretty much any bit in a Happy Mouth.
When I'm starting a youngster and I really want them to like the bit, the Happy Mouth tastes good, they feel good."
(Full Cheek Happy Mouth Bits):
"I do start the horses in Happy Mouths and I love the full cheeks.
I love the full cheeks when you're teaching a horse how to steer, they're really fantastic because they influence the whole side of the horse's mouth rather than just the mouth.
When you're teaching a horse how to steer, sometimes they don't quite get it and if you use a bit like this, the ring ends up getting pulled through and into their mouth.
With a full cheek it won't happen.
When you start off a youngster, my very favorite bit is this one.
What they've done is they incorporated the full cheek with the Happy Mouth, with the link in the middle.
It doesn't get better than this.
When you're starting a youngster, in my opinion, not only a youngster, when you're starting a horse in my opinion, this is the best starting bit.
They love them.
Then if you want, if you need a little more, you can go to this full cheek.
So this full cheek, as you can see doesn't have the link in the middle.
This is what I call an old-fashioned full cheek, it just has the single.
You can see the difference with how it hangs in their palette. See how much softer this one is? This link allows it to sit on their tongue whereas this one pokes against the tongue. See?
This gives you a lot more control.
A lot more leverage because when you pull back, it points down on their tongue, whereas this one is the softest and the most lovely.
You can go from this to this if you want.
A lot of horses are really happy working in this. This is what I had on the pony Twirl, except for it was like this, regular full cheek without the happy mouth part.
Here it is, here's Twirls hunter bridle, and you see he's just wearing a normal, old fashion, I call them old-fashioned, full cheek with a single joint in the middle.
I love them.
They're wonderful.
They don't have to be fat with the diameter.
The width is perfectly fine.
So we've got your first starting off baby horse bit, then we can evolve if you want to this bit, perfectly fine.
Then if you want, you can evolve to this bit, perfectly fine.
Then if you're going to stay in the hunter world or the jumper world, you can stay with this forever.
Or you can go[typey 27:36] of the hunters, which is a D ring.
I don't have any because I don't like the look of them.
I don't have any Ds.
I don't like the look of them. I much prefer a full cheek look."