Open or Blinkered Bridles

[Billy Anderson]

Busy training my young clyde and i thought i would ask peoples opinion on working with blinkered bridles or open bridles.
At present im using open bridle and i’m keen to carry on this way.
I guess im just trying to find out pros and cons of either way

[wvhorsedoc]

Billy, I changed to open bridles a couple years ago. Driving on back roads (gravel or dirt) here in WV, many are
straight up on one side and straight down on the other. When meeting oncoming traffic while in blinders they would often get a wheel over the brim on the low side of the road, which raised my “pucker factor” off the scale, which in turn could be felt by the horses. When I removed the blinkers I never had another problem as the horses could see how close they were, and we all were much more comfortable with the reduced anxiety. It only took a couple trips to have them driving open like they were born to it.

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