hi I'm Kelley King from crk training in today's vlog video we're going to talk about the proper technique for putting on a bridle so this is another one of those topics that seems very basic but I know that there's some little tips that I can give you that's going to make it a lot easier especially if you have a horse that might be a little bit difficult with bridling okay so I've out here with Molly I left her halter on and generally unless you really know your horse or you're in a controlled situation before you would take the halter off you want to put the reins over your horse's head so I'm just going to slip these over a head like that then you can go ahead and take your halter off and just a good tip for kind of for keeping yourself safe and keeping your equipment in better condition is to not drop things on the floor so one thing that I see a lot of people are new to horses kind of making the mistake of doing is though either let their bridle hang or they'll take the halter off and just let it drop or let it hang on a cross tie it's not really a good habit to get into because that kind of thing if your horse does start to move they can catch a foot in it they can step on it and damage it or break something you know rip something if they kind of get caught up on it so just a good habit to get into is keeping your equipment either placed somewhere out of the way or over your shoulder like this okay so as I go to put the bridle on here I'm going to reach up here between her ears and I'm going to grab the crown piece of the bridle with this hand so this is a really good strategy if you have a horse that tends to throw his head out of the way you can put your hand here hold your bridle like this now if your horse reacts to just having your hand here I would probably do a little bit work a little bit of work first with getting the new stuff in your hand here and you can also ask them to drop their head from just a little bit of a pressure there and that way they start to learn to comfortably stay here and that way when you grab your bridle you've just got good control of the bridle and you're basically with your hand here you're kind of cueing their head to stay nice and low now I know I picked a very easy horse to bridle today and the truth is I was trying to think I really don't have a difficult one to bridle on the farm right now so I'm going to share the tips that I would use if Molly was a little bit more difficult to bridle but fortunately for me she actually is very good so I'm going to take this again now when you hold the bit usually like to hold it in these fingers that way you can use your thumb to slip into the corner of their mouth and basically cue their mouths open if you have a horse that doesn't want to open his mouth I'll basically try to find there's always a point where when you stick your thumb in there or you kind of rub it against their gum or their tongue they're eventually going to open their mouth because it's uncomfortable and you just kind of find that point and then you can slip the bit in if you're really having trouble with getting just the mouth open I usually tell people to do this practice it without holding the bit right there and just see like okay what do I need to do to get the mouth to open and then you try to repeat that same thing when you're holding the bride on the beginning it can seem like a lot to hold and to kind of coordinate your fingers but if you can kind of get used to you know doing one thing at a time can be a little bit easier to put it all together alright so I'm going to hold it up here like this and then if you're lucky and you have a words like Molly she usually opens her mouth almost as soon as she feels the bit there I'm just going to slip it in be really careful with slipping it in softly because if you start banging the horse's teeth with a bit they're automatically going to try to get their head out of the way because it's uncomfortable and it's going to make it a lot more difficult the next time that you go to put the bridle in so try to be soft and then your horse is going to learn that bridling is a fine procedure and it doesn't causing discomfort same thing here when you put through the ears through the or under the crown piece of the harder' you don't want to drag it over and crush the ears like this instead hold the top of the bridle out here fold the ear under do the same thing with the other one again it keeps it a lot more comfortable for the horse I like to get all the hair out of the way up there and then I'll start to do my straps so I'm using a kind of dressage style bridle here so it does have a nose band on it most the time I actually don't use a nose band just because I really don't prefer them I'd rather just have the horse be able to use his his mouth and open his mouth whenever he needs to but I figured for today's video I know a lot of people use them and I wanted to be able to show you you know how you kind of adjust it how do you adjust it with with that on okay so I'm going to take my throat latch here goes to this top strap and the throat laughs you want to adjust so that you have about a fist so I'll make this just a little bit tighter here and then the noseband you want to have about two fingers underneath their check boat or cheek bone that's where you want the nose band to rest and then there's a lot of different opinions on how tight you make a nose band generally you want the nose band so that you can slip about two fingers in so it's adjusted pretty snugly again since I tend do not even ride with them I leave them just a little bit looser I don't want to have that constant pressure around the horse's nose again there's ly different schools of thought about how how you should adjust the bridle so you know basically how tight the bit hangs in the horse's mouth same as with the nose band I prefer not to have a lot of pressure there so I tend to adjust mine pretty loose it depends on the horse because horses mouths are built a little bit differently and you want to think more about where the bit is laying in regards to the teeth rather than just the lips but as a general rule I adjust it so there's just one slight wrinkle sometimes two again depending on the horse but one or two slight wrinkles on the corner of the mouth is about how you want to have the the bit adjusted in there so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it off I'm going to show you just one more strategy that I'll use if I have a horse that really moves his head a lot putting the bridle on and this may be helpful for you as well Sariah take these back off and - when you're taking off a bridle always make sure you undo both straps some people tend to leave the noseband hooked up and again it can just make it can make it a little bit more uncomfortable for the horse when you take the bridle off and then when you're going to put it back on it makes it more difficult if you've got a nose band that's hooked up all right so I'm going to slip this off when you take a bridle off always hold it drop it slowly and let the horses spit it out of their mouth don't just drop it and rip it right out we've got some bug's here that are your tuning or a bit so another strategy that I'll use if I have a horse that's really like moving their head a lot side-to-side is I'll hold the bridge of the nose here like this and I'll grab the bridle basically right under the brow band and if your nose band is getting in the way you can even hold the nose band up like this and then put the bride on this way you can also kind of bring the horse's head to the side if you have a horse that's moving his head a lot and that's just another tip for forgetting the bridle on if you've got a horse that is a little bit more difficult all right I'm not going to hook everything back up that's going to conclude our video on bridling if you have any questions or if you have any other tips that you would like to share go ahead and put them in the comments and as always if you're watching this anywhere besides crk training blog com go there that's usually where the best conversation happens and there's plenty of other videos for you there as well thanks for watching