What AQHA will not let you put on a horse
Saw tooth bits. War bridles. Wire curb straps, no matter how padded. The prohibited equipment list is the most revealing page in the rulebook.
Every rulebook has a list of things you may not use. It is usually the dullest page in the document. AQHA’s is not, because you can read the history off it.
Nothing gets banned in advance. Each line is there because somebody turned up with it.
The list
From SHW307, western prohibited equipment, in the rulebook’s own vocabulary:
Wire curb straps, regardless of how padded or covered. Curb straps with tacks or rivets. Any curb strap narrower than half an inch. Chain, wire or metal tie-downs, regardless of how padded or wrapped.
Belly bands. Saw tooth bits. Hock hobbles. Tack collars. Tack curb straps and tack hackamores. War bridles or like devices. Riding in a curb bit without a curb strap. Wire cavessons. Wire or cable tie-downs. Bumper bits. Metal bosals, no matter how padded. Chambons. Headstalls made of metal, no matter how wrapped or padded, or of twisted rawhide, or of rope.
Jerk lines for roping. Tack collars for roping. Draw reins attached between or around the front legs.
The phrase that repeats
Read it again and notice how often the rule anticipates an argument.
Regardless of how padded or covered. No matter how padded. No matter how wrapped or padded. Regardless of how padded or wrapped.
That phrase appears four times, attached to wire and to metal. Somebody, more than once, turned up with wire on a horse and a defence ready about how it was wrapped. The rule is written to close the defence rather than the practice, because the practice was already obvious.
“Tack” in this list is not the general word for saddlery. A tack curb strap or tack hackamore is one with points set into it. That is why they are named separately from the wire ones.
What is allowed instead
The permitted equipment rules are as specific as the bans, and they read like a description of restraint.
A hackamore must be round, made of uniform smooth braided rawhide or leather, with a non-metal flexible core. At least five and a half inches of the underside of the noseband must be clear before any braided buttons begin. Absolutely no rigid material under the jaws, regardless of how padded or covered. Horsehair bosals are prohibited.
A curb bit’s shank may be no longer than eight and a half inches. Nothing may protrude below the mouthpiece — no extensions, no prongs. The port may be no higher than three and a half inches. Mouthpiece bars must be round, oval or egg-shaped, smooth, unwrapped metal, between five sixteenths and three quarters of an inch thick, measured an inch in from the cheek.
Those are the dimensions of things that are allowed to sit inside a horse’s mouth, written to the sixteenth of an inch.
Boots are banned too, and that one is different
Protective boots, leg wraps and bandages are prohibited in western pleasure, trail, halter, western riding, showmanship, longe line, ranch riding and ranch trail.
That is not a welfare rule in the same way as the others. Boots hide a leg. In classes judged on how a horse moves and on its natural appearance, the rule keeps the leg visible to the judge. It sits with the ban on hoof polish and tail extensions rather than with the ban on saw tooth bits.
Why a banned list is worth reading
I came to this page looking for the bit rules and stayed for the archaeology.
A rulebook that says “no wire curb straps” is describing a sport. A rulebook that says “no wire curb straps, regardless of how padded or covered” is describing an argument the sport has already had, and lost patience with.