Why does my horse grind his teeth?

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By: Andrew McLean Dip Ed, BSc, PhD Equine Behavioural Practitioner

In the absence of dental or other health issues, grinding the teeth has to be seen as a conflict behaviour. Teeth grinding is one of the behaviours that results from going forward into too strong a contact. It is more often displayed by dressage, event and racehorses, and this is because there is greater necessity for contact compared with say western sports. The problem is the contact is too high – way too much pressure – and combined with concurrent ‘go’ signals from the rider’s legs, the horse is trapped. Teeth grinding is an expression of conflict and a sign that the horse is not being trained to work in self-carriage.

It is easy for people to become immune to the things that we currently do to horses. Children learn the culture and become immune to the pain of the horse. We need to recognize that the horse’s mouth is very sensitive and horses should not be leaning on the bars of their mouths. The reins should be conduits for signals and that’s all, so the horse just responds easily to them. Bit pressure should only be on the lips and tongue. When rein pressure is light and the horse is in self-carriage, that conduit can whisper messages to its mouth, but if the contact is heavy then you have to scream the messages with even stronger rein aids. If the horse is showing conflict behaviours the message is even duller because the horse is preoccupied.

Teeth grinding can also become stereotypical, whereby it feeds itself, like humans biting their nails, like windsucking and weaving in horses. Sometimes even after the original cause has disappeared, the teeth grinding will continue, and this is common with horses off the track. You can re-train the responses but they may still grind their teeth. If it becomes so neurotic and chronic, yes, it will remain as a habit, but it may eventually disappear if you train self-carriage, it will just take longer.

What to do about it? Re-train the four things the reins do regarding deceleration.

1. Retrain the downwards transitions from rein aids releasing immediately when the horse responds.
2. Slow within the gait releasing the pressure the moment he does slow.
3. Train the horse to shorten his step within the gait, releasing the pressure when he shortens the steps.
4. Train the horse to step backwards releasing after the first step. Some people would say they use their seat for those things, but when the seat fails we always go back to rein aids and therefore responses to rein aids need to be thoroughly trained so they work in time of seat failure. Continue to maintain that the horse works in self-carriage, whenever he leans do one of those 4 responses and teach him to travel on his own.

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