Dressage Wiki The independent dressage encyclopedia

Contact Faults: Tilting, Open Mouth, Tongue Issues

By the Dressage Wiki Editorial Board · Updated 9 July 2026

Contents
  1. The correct picture, briefly
  2. Head tilting
  3. The open mouth
  4. Tongue faults
  5. Leaning, above the bit, and the busy head
  6. Physical causes come first
  7. What the family means on a score sheet and a screen
  8. Sources

Contact faults are the visible failures of the connection between the rider’s hand and the horse’s mouth: head tilting, an open or busy mouth, the tongue drawn up, over the bit or hanging out, leaning on the hand, or coming above the bit. The FEI’s standard for correct contact is a light, consistent, soft connection with a quiet mouth, and its judging guidance instructs judges to penalise contact and mouth problems wherever they appear. The family matters doubly because its members have physical as well as training causes, so a contact fault is always a diagnostic question before it is a training one.

The correct picture, briefly

The reference standard is worth restating because every fault below is a departure from it: the horse accepts the bridle with a soft, steady, elastic contact, chews the bit quietly with a closed but not clamped mouth, and seeks the connection forward — ridden, in the classic phrase, from back to front, with the energy from the hindquarters received in an allowing hand. The frame questions (behind the vertical, above the bit) have their own article; this one covers the head and mouth.

Head tilting

A tilted head (one ear lower than the other, the nose swung fractionally sideways) is among the most persistent minor faults in the sport, most visible in the lateral work and the half-passes where bend is being asked. Judges mark it within the movement (“tilting in the half-pass”) and read it as an evenness fault: the horse is taking the two reins differently, usually because it is stiffer on one side, occasionally because the rider’s hands are uneven, and sometimes for the physical reasons below. Tilting rarely destroys a mark on its own; its cost is cumulative, shaving half-points across every movement in which it appears and flagging a straightness gap that grows more expensive up the levels.

The open mouth

An open mouth under saddle spans a spectrum the judge must place. Soft chewing is correct and desirable. A mouth that opens under pressure, gaping in the transitions or crossing the jaw against the rein, signals resistance to the contact and is marked as such, both in the movements where it appears and, when persistent, in the submission collective. The reading is contextual: a horse that opens its mouth in every half-halt is telling a consistent story about the connection; one that gapes once in a spooky corner is not.

The noseband sits inside this fault’s politics. A tightly cranked noseband can hold a resisting mouth shut, converting a visible fault into an invisible tension, and the sport’s rules have moved against the practice: FEI tack rules govern noseband fit, and stewards check tightness at competitions. The debate over how tight is too tight, and how checks should be standardised, is ongoing and documented in the sport’s governance discussions.

Tongue faults

The tongue faults are the family’s most serious members, in ascending order of concern: a busy tongue playing with the bit; the tongue drawn up in the mouth; the tongue hanging visibly out; and the tongue drawn over the bit, which puts the bit’s action directly onto the bars of the mouth. Judges penalise visible tongue faults consistently, and remarks name them (“tongue out left”). Their seriousness comes from what they usually mean: a horse evading bit pressure it finds uncomfortable, whether the discomfort’s origin is the hand, the bit, the teeth or a learned habit from an earlier chapter of the horse’s life. Tongue habits, once established, are among the most stubborn faults in the sport (many persist at some level for the rest of a career, managed rather than cured), which is why they carry disproportionate weight when a horse is being evaluated.

Leaning, above the bit, and the busy head

Three more members complete the family. Leaning, the horse using the rider’s hand as a fifth leg, is a balance fault expressed at the contact: the weight belongs on the hindquarters, and judges mark the heaviness wherever the balance question is asked, most visibly in the downward transitions. Above the bit, with the head up, the back dropped and the connection abandoned upward, is the mirror image of behind the vertical and generally reads as tension or a hollow-backed way of going. The unsteady head, nodding, snatching or fidgeting against the contact, reads as an unsteady connection from either end of the rein, and the judge’s view at C, straight up the centreline, catches it reliably.

Physical causes come first

The family’s defining feature is that every member has plausible physical causes alongside the training ones: sharp teeth or dental pain, an ill-fitting bit or one wrong for the mouth’s conformation, a badly adjusted bridle, poll or jaw discomfort, and, upstream of all of it, back or hindquarter pain expressing itself at the mouth. Professional practice therefore runs the physical checks — teeth, tack fit, veterinary assessment where warranted — before treating any persistent contact fault as a training problem, and the same order applies in reverse when evaluating a horse: a contact fault of unknown origin on a sales video is a question for the pre-purchase examination, not a detail to be explained away.

What the family means on a score sheet and a screen

On a score sheet, contact faults distribute themselves: individual movement marks catch the visible incidents, the submission collective aggregates the pattern, and the remarks name the specifics. Read across a set of sheets, a recurring “tilting” or “mouth open” remark is a horse’s consistent signature, not a judge’s mood. On a screen, the family rewards slow-motion attention to the mouth and ears, and rewards equally the footage that is missing: a sales video that never shows the head straight-on, or shows the horse only in a thick noseband, has made an editorial choice the viewer is entitled to notice, as covered in the video-reading guide.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Why does a dressage horse tilt its head? Usually unevenness: the horse takes the two reins differently because it is stiffer on one side, the rider’s hands are uneven, or occasionally for physical reasons (teeth, bit fit, poll discomfort). Judges mark it within the affected movements and read it as a straightness flag.

Is an open mouth penalised in dressage? Persistent opening, gaping in transitions or crossing the jaw is penalised as resistance to the contact, in the movements and the submission collective. Soft, quiet chewing of the bit is correct and not a fault.

What does it mean when a horse puts its tongue over the bit? The horse is evading bit pressure, placing the bit’s action on the bars of the mouth. It is among the most penalised and most stubborn contact faults, and its causes (hand, bit, teeth, or an installed habit) warrant physical investigation before retraining.

Can contact faults be physical rather than training problems? Frequently. Teeth, bit and bridle fit, poll or jaw discomfort and pain elsewhere in the body all express themselves at the mouth, which is why professional practice checks the physical causes first, and why a persistent unexplained contact fault on a sale horse belongs on the vetting list.

How much do contact faults cost in a test? Individually, fractions of marks across many movements; collectively, more — the submission or harmony collective aggregates the pattern, and its coefficient multiplies the cost. A test’s contact story is usually told more accurately by the collectives than by any single movement mark.