line pressure

Jen, My guidline as as little as posible to gain the desired results. I would rather have a horse work well with the least or almost no pressure if possible. It is far more enjoyable for me this way especially when driving 6 or 8. I have driven other peoples teams that “lug” on you constantly and I dislike it. This comes from holding a “heavy” line and asking them to go. They get used to this and then “lug” on you all the time. I like them to respect the bit and stand when asked, respond to the bit as well as respond to it when they get excited or scared but once they are well broke to all equipment our horses need minimal guidance so the work is stress free for us and them.

I don’t know any other way to learn – other than hands on Bob. We may talk and write about it but that feeling you are describing happened in the flesh not on the computer screen of magazine page or video.

It is a dance with animals, but like all touch dancing – one leads the other follows.

What do you think Jen?

I come from a background of riding horses on this cow ranch. We ride a lot more than we drive. The feeling of a riding horse with a heavy mouth still bothers me. This might translate to my dislike of heavy mouthed driving horses.
I was always taught that to be make your horses light, you had to be only as hard on them as you needed to get the response you’re looking for. That’s a simple sounding thing to do, but much harder in practice.
Most of my driving is feeding cows for 6 or 7 months. This is normally by myself and the team has to be able to work on a slack line. No way around it. I want them to be able to handle slight pressure when I’m driving through tight places, but that’s about it.
The last team of Belgians I had were a really nice team, but they were older and had been driven on a tight line. One horse adjusted well to my routine, the other would absolutely lose his confidence when you didn’t have contact with his mouth. I was constantly having to reel him in and shut him down while feeding. He wore a buck back most of the time, and you couldn’t go without it. I tried for 3 years to get him to walk the feed ground. He never did get entirely used to it.
I did read Donn’s article also and he handles them much like my Dad did and how he taught me. That article made a lot of sense to me and I thought it was a really good one. Well done Donn.

I also really enjoyed Donn’s article. As a new teamster this topic has been on my mind a lot as well. I started driving with much more contact than I do now. We swiched to a liverpool bit from a snaffle as we felt our team “lugging” more and more as time went on, so we changed everything, the bit and the way we drove and I’m really happy with it. It is a real challenge to get it right though, and Pat Palmer gave me the post analogy and I think about it a lot. It is so much easier to practice when on the ground. I can say…I am going to walk this slowly now, and it is your job to adjust your pace to keep the line pressure off. That is so much harder when attatched to their pace on a wheeled vehicle.

Kristan