7 yr old Belg/Brabants

These mares are in St. Ignacious (sp?) and were trained by Marvin Brisk in Idaho.
We may be interested, but in the meantime, would appreciate experts’ thoughts.

Thanks, Kevin

I like ’em….but then, I like a draft horse that looks like a draft horse! 😉 We’re not too far from them, and there’s alot of good horsemen in that area. It’s a good thing we don’t win the lotto…:D
John

I don’t know if that is a general question?

The horses in the photos look sweet on the bit. I think that is a female driver and she looks pretty comfortable having them in hand.

I definitely use a lever bit and have for about twenty five years now. Before that we would have runaways, you can’t hold any scared horse with a snaffle or friction bit.

But that still means you have to have sensitive touch and reward their movement with lighter touch, giving them a little freedom every time they slow down or come back to you, in pace, in response to a reasonable contact in their mouths. If you are able to keep good form while driving you are able to keep the horses sweetly moving at a reasonable rate.

But there is a lot of feel to it and some horses have all sorts of history that any driver or trainer may take a while to get through and have a light touch with them.

Of course the lever bit is adjustable, so you certainly can put less effort into more signal and that softens their pulling on the bit and when adjusted properly won’t callous or scar their mouths, like friction bits.

I suspect some of the other hands on here can speak to this soften their mouths issue.

Good Thread man.

~~~

Geoff: We’re south of Billings 70 miles, in Lovell, Wy. These are the only “real” horses we have….

Thougth I’d get to know them today so trimmed Matildas feet, a couple months overdue. Next brought out the collars, and Maude saw me coming with them and made a run for it, but I had them in the round pen:p Matilda acted like the harness was the scary monster, took awhile to sack her out then harness her.

Ground drove each separately for 10 minutes, then ground drove both together for 10 minutes. “feelin their grain” would aptly describe them, they hadn’t been harnessed or worked in I think at least 6 months, and only a couple times in the past year….
Hooked them up to a full length telephone pole so the butt end would plow some dirt for a couple trips back and forth across the 80 acre length, but figured that if they were going to keep high stepping, might as well get some work done.
So hitched to the 7 ft. single disc I scored from the same place we got the mares, and a few hours (many stops in between) they had settled into a great pace and rhythm.
Really impressed with them so far, wondering what they are saying about me…

Biggest issue to date will be to safely get them “unbonded” They really like eachother… I guess I’ll post updates in the member diaries with pics from now on…

Kevin