Advice for starting driving

I second what Don said. If you can have an experienced person with you the first time or two in harness, it’ll do a lot for your confidence.

The most important advice has already been written (work with someone, or a few someones).

I have also worked with several very experienced riders, and my only extra feed back is that it takes a bit of intellectual effort to change the habits of body contact that riders are accustom to. Work with someone who is working horses so that you can get exposed to the ways that drivers “connect” to the horse.

I know that not all people are the same, but I have noticed that “riders” tend to have a hard time learning to direct and connect to the horse when they are not in the seat.

It really is none of my business, but I think that riders do themselves a disservice when starting out learning to drive, and riding instead. I appreciate the desire to have a horse that is dual purpose. I also understand the need to do something with the horse that one is comfortable with, but the two exercises are very different.

I’m not saying that training a horse to ride is wrong, just learn to separate the two perspectives in your mind, and work on them in their own contexts.

Carl

miniclyde, after getting them ground driving nicely what i do is take one of my forecarts that has metal shafts and put it in their corral and feed them hay from it. Ket them bang around on it step over the shafts ect. make is so they have to step over the shafts to get hay whatever works. Then i’ll back them into to the shafts(on the ground, then lift the shafts touch their sides till their goodd with it, play all sorts of games, hitch them eventually, tie them up and stand with the cart while i do chores to keep an eye on them, then sooner or later take them for a spin though a usually start out in a team hitch with a seasoned horse. Depending on my time this could take months. Good luck

neal maine

There really isn’t much to confuse him with. Would you rather ride him tomorrow or drive him to work? Figure out what you want to do and start there. If you spend three days teaching a horse to drive and on the fourth day you get on it’s back, that shouldn’t mess up his abilitity to continue learning to drive on the next day. When you have a clear picture of the purpose you are training for; say you need fire wood and want to skid it with the horse ( that is just one example of a clear purpose); the training will become clear and direct. Something the horse can relate to. What is it you want to do with the horse, right now? DH

@karl t pfister 11447 wrote:

Every possible combination has been tried, and I have never seen it written in stone “The best Way”.

Yes I agree with all who responded here and I think this statement from Karl about summed it up. The horse is yours to do with as you see fit and you should accommodate your needs with him. There are no hard fast answers in a fluid process such as training, but there are easier and different ways. If you read other threads on this site you will read some references to a kind of virtual “toolbox”. I am not sure who came up with the analogy but I think it is a great one. Every time you handle him it is a training experience. Be it new or a refresher. My philosophy is to expose them to as many things as I can think of to familiarize them with as much as possible. Then I can build on those experiences. There are easy lessons and hard ones but the sooner you have trained for saddle and harness the sooner you can either ride or drive. I don’t believe harness one day and saddle the next would be confusing either. I think it would be similar but on a lager scope to desensitizing him to a waving flag and a bridge crossing over a river next to a dam in the same day. When you get him by the flag you can worry about the bridge and theoretically getting back home should be a little easier. Tomorrow will be an entirely different story. No matter the task, situation, or discipline; you must put in the time and repetitions to get the desired result.

Larry