My horse might as well have had a LOBOTOMY!

I am writing to tell you that in my 20+ years of serious riding I have never encountered anything like what has happened to me after I tried your bitless bridle”

I have always known that I had a “bit” sensitive horse in my 11 year old Thoroughbred gelding.  My arsenal of bits could prove that!  I have owned him for about 5 years and he is an ex-racehorse from England.  He is a lovely and talented horse that I have shown in hunter jumping for several years.  He is kind but he is also defensively very aggressive and being very athletic as well, this lead to some scary situations.  I did think about selling him several times but as he got older he seemed to mature and behave better. 
 
Over the last 6-7 months, he has become hard to ride.  On the flat, he developed anxieties cantering and while doing lead changes which were never his favorite.  He can jump beautifully and easily but he started bolting to his jumps especially the second or third in a line.  I had therefore, decided to stop jumping for a while and work him on the flat doing more dressage work to try to alleviate his anxieties. 
 
While things were getting better, any time I pushed him a little beyond what he was comfortable with, his anxiety would return as did his getting over the bit, under the bit, his rooting, his bolting, his grabbing of the bit and his head shaking.  It sometimes would take another 20 minutes of hard trot work just to get him back again and sometimes even then, we would quit as nothing seemed to improve. 
 
I read an article about bitless bridles and decided to give it a try.  I figured, if nothing else, we could do some trail riding and give him a break for the bit.  After a particularly bad training day, I took his bitted bridle off and replaced it with your bitless and went back down to my ring.  Well, I have to tell you, my horse might as well have had a LOBOTOMY!  This was NOT the same horse!  He was amazing!  He was calm, comfortable, happy and doing EVERYTHING I asked of him including the dreaded work off the inside leg to outside hand!  All this in the TWO minutes it took to put the bitless bridle on!  He cantered beautifully collected and yet still underneath himself and he made no fuss over lead changes.  He has become almost a little boring as he is nearly perfect in all I ask of him!
 
The big challenge came today when I decided to try to jump him in the bitless.  I was hoping to maintain his happy calm and easygoing manner over jumps as well but I was worried.  I did not need to be.  He jumped like he has not jumped in months!  He never bolted or ran away from me!  He jumped in great form and seemed almost nonchalant about it all when before, he became extremely agitated when we started to jump!  This is the reason we had not jumped in the last 3 months.  I was ELATED to say the least!  I can’t tell you what it means to me to have my horse back!  I never imagined your bitless bridle could do that for me!  I am going to purchase another as my mare loves it as well.  My 12 year old daughter jumped her using the bitless for the first time and she didn’t even notice the change!
 
I want to thank you for caring so much about the welfare of horses to have invented such a wonderful and kind and user friendly way of riding!  Now, I want to write to the FEI as in eventing, we do dressage and I never want to have to use a bit ever again!  For now, I hope that he will be calm enough while training in his bitless to not take offense when I have to use a bit for show purposes.  I think it is ridiculous that we don’t have the option!!

Beatrice Poulin

25 days later, Beatrice sent us this follow-up evidence:

I have been riding in my BB for several weeks now and my trainer and I were wondering how my horse would react if I put his regular bitted bridle on again. Well, I had the opportunity to find out as today I am attending a schooling show and must wear a bit for the dressage test.  So, on Thursday I worked him in the BB and did my test twice.  He was quite good.  I then placed the bitted bridle on him just to do the test ONE time.  He was NOT the same relaxed horse he had been 5 minutes earlier.  He bucked for the canter transition, fought the frame and tossed his head.  His attitude was what I remember before the BB…difficult, tense and unhappy.