Dewey's Bridle Adjustments

I jumped Dewey a bit this morning before the wind turned on and I had to retreat to the barn to clean tack (4 saddles, 5 bridles, cleaned and conditioned - phew!).  I've been jumping him in the hackamore, but he's been tossing his head a bit when we canter and make tight turns, so I videoed the ride with the Pivo to get a better idea of what's really going on.  I was suspicious that he was losing his balance in the turns and that's why he was tossing his head, because he is so short coupled he really needs to use his neck for balance.  

However, when I watched the video this evening, it was a much simpler explanation.  Dewey has a face that is shaped a little differently than the average thoroughbred.  He has a thick throatlatch, but a somewhat small distance between the middle of his face and his eye.  When I slowed down the video and looked closely, I discovered the real reason he was tossing his head at the canter.  When I would ask Dewey to lift his inside shoulder by lifting my inside hand, the hackamore would tip forwards, causing the cheek piece of the bridle to nearly touch his eye!  Each head tossing incident was preceded by the leather sliding forwards on his face.  

Here is a photo that illustrates the issue we're having:

Dewey has a short distance between his eye and where the bridle straps sit.

So when I lift my inside hand to rebalance him in the corner,

 it pulls the bottom of the hackamore backwards, and then the bridle cheek piece forwards.

Having the leather nearly touch his eye understandably irritates him.  Because he's such a good sport he doesn't put his head down to buck me off (as some horses I know and love would do), he just tosses his head to tell me something is wrong.

This particular issue doesn't happen with his bit, because there's no leverage with the snaffle bit in which he works.  (His head tossing with the bit is nearly always that he needs a dental to correct for a molar which grows sideways towards his tongue in his mouth instead of straight down to meet the bottom teeth.  He had a dental just over a week ago so that has been corrected for.) To try to correct the problem and make him more comfortable I switched out that hackamore for one with less leverage, and I adjusted the top portion of the noseband so that there is as much space between his eye and the cheek piece leather as possible.  I'll give it a try and see what he says.  

Otherwise we had a great ride, with some decent photos from the pivo video.