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It kind of comes with the territory, Mitch. It’s the same as being photographed candidly. You never know what the story is behind the situation. I once had my picture taken and put in an equine publication; my horse was wearing a hastily-borrowed harness that was about five kinds of loose and sloppy, but the collar fit and the hames fit and I was just dragging stuff on the ground. Made me look pretty bad, though. Them’s the breaks! But, yeah, we should take into consideration that there might be a perfectly good reason for things being the way they are.

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I own this video as well. If you don’t have an old horse farmer at your disposal, Farmer Brown’s instructional plowing video is the next best thing. I enjoyed it.

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You are right about Ozz tracking better when he has a visual cue to navigate by. He’ll pick it up in short order when there’s something to shoot for/avoid. When the horse(s) don’t have a visual cue, your shoulder-steering skills get sorely taxed. If you were on a riding cultivator and had both hands on the lines, you’d have no problem. But when your hands are needed on the implement handles and you have to steer with your shoulders… well, it’s a whole ‘nother skill to acquire.

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Those are great photos! Thank you!

I know I’ve rattled on at length about point of hitch and maintaining the shoulder/collar/hames angle, but the third photo in the first post is a great illustration. It shows one of those uncommon instances (this instance being the rope-and-pulley hitch) where the point of hitch is high enough that the belly band and market strap should be adjusted to keep the collar lying correctly against the shoulder, for maximum comfort and efficiency of labor. A wide belly band would also increase the horse’s comfort.

The photo shows a slight kink in the traces where the belly band is anchoring the tugs down somewhat, but not much.

With this many animals, it is highly unlikely that any one horse will be substantially inconvenienced. The horsepower provided is far more than is required, so the teamster doesn’t have to milk out every detail to the horses’ advantage.

However, if a person were to increase the work load (fewer horses, more shares in the soil, heavier soil, longer work day, etc.) and make a habit of it, it would be effective to outfit the lead set of horses with wider belly bands and adjust the market strap/belly band ratio to keep the front part of the tugs 90 degrees to the shoulder.

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Weaver Leather carries them, so I imagine most harness places do as well. I wonder if there are different manufacturers of hame binders and if so, if there is a difference in quality between them.

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@mitchmaine 17503 wrote:

hey guys, the only thing i’d add was they were invented for the pulling ring by dick wallingford. they had a double hame strap at the throat, and probably were unbreakable. i always wanted a set but they were pretty pricey. richard (wallingford) was always looking for a horse to match his “rock” horse and his guarantee was “if your horse breaks this hame, i’ll buy the horse!”

I hadn’t heard that. Love it!

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Wow, that’s an amazing testament to the skill of their trainer and driver!

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When I need to keep the lines in hand, I have a bit of a habit/trick that I picked up from a friend and mentor.

When he buckles his cruppers on, he doesn’t tuck the ends of the crupper fork billets all the way through the other side of the buckle to make them lie flat. After insterting the buckle tongue through the appropriate hole of the billet, he tucks only the end of the billet through the other side of the buckle. This creates an arch of leather that stands up. He does this with both buckles of the crupper, on any horse he is harnessing for work.

The two arches of leather create a sort of channel between them, which is a great place to lay the lines to keep them together and quiet while you move around holding the ends of the lines. He says that his horse feels the weight of the leather laying on her tail and it acts as a sort of “parking brake”. The horse is never asked to move while the lines are laying there, so it is easier for the horse to ignore any distracting sounds. When he switches sides of the team, he moves the lines to lay between the other horse’s crupper buckles.

Another thing he sometimes does is, after laying the two lines there, he takes the rest of the lines, doubles them over, and lays them against the tail crosswise, above the crupper buckles and the arches of the crupper fork billets, which create something of a little shelf. This gives a convenient place to lay the lines, keeping them off the ground, untangled, but within easy reach.

I lay my lines down the tail of the nearest horse, between the crupper buckles, but I have not made a habit of making the billets stand up the way he does. It is not as secure to do it halfheartedly, the way I do, and you cannot then lay the rest of the lines across the rump above the buckles – for they would have nothing to keep them from sliding the rest of the way down off the tail – but it does help quiet the lines when you need to have them in hand while working from the ground.

This assumes, of course, that you are using a crupper. The way my crupper is constructed, the buckle itself does is only “D” shaped and not square or oval. Instead of tucking the rest of the fork billet down under the other half of the buckle, the harnessmaker has sew a leather keeper to do the job. This keeper actually does stand up from the buckle quite a ways, making a sufficient guide in which to lay the lines.

I hope I have described this well enough for the reader to visualize it.

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@Carl Russell 17466 wrote:

I have been in a few parades etc. and found it too distressing, and having some way to keep the lines close at hand would be valuable.

Distressing. That is just the word, too. I love my horses, and I love sharing them with others. You can see the appreciation reflected on the faces of many of the spectators, but I sure love seeing that occasional brighter glow on the face of a true horse-lover. All the better when it is the face of a youngster. I love answering questions and I love giving people the opportunity to see horses working in harness – something that is difficult to come by any more.

But the risks and the stress make it hard to enjoy oneself when your mind is in the habit of running all the possible disaster scenarios. Very distressing. And of course the horses pick up on it, and pretty soon no one is enjoying themselves so you trap it inside where the horses aren’t bothered so badly by it.

So, yes, it is distressing. And weighing the pros and cons of the whole situation makes one stay at home as often as not.

But I got my first glimpse of dappled gray Percheron rump at the fair, and it changed me forever… I can’t forget that, so I do still go to this local fair, as well as few other public events. And afterward, when everyone is home safe again, I have a stiff drink and count my lucky stars. 😀

Sorry for the ramble, guess I’m feeling a little reminiscent today.

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Leather can certainly be stiff compared to canvas lines, but the good-quality leather should rapidly become supple in the hand. I’ve had my hands on some really garbage low-grade leather lines that would have put me off leather entirely if I hadn’t also used the good stuff to compare it to.

Wet leather, though, that’s another matter. That’s what I like about my “granite” lines; here in the often-soggy Pacific Northwest US, the synthetic lines provide the traction when I need them. I split my usage about 50%/50% between my leather lines and my granite lines.

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There is a small local draft horse show I go to each year. While event staffing does try to keep people from coming through the barns while we are hitching and harnessing, in reality there are still a lot of kids with balloons, distracted moms with double-wide strollers and – like John mentioned – folks whose desire to interact with the horses leads them to make all sorts of noises at the animals.

This is an example of one of those situations where I do expect my horses to stand but always have the lines in my hands. Not because I’m expecting my horses to misbehave, but because I’m afraid a human being will misbehave. People take it upon themselves to do some weird things.

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@CharlyBonifaz 17409 wrote:

how do you keep those loops from entangling? I always end with knots :confused: I try to sort them between my fingers … with little success…..
using a double-longe as line and aware of the catch

Is the longe made of canvas or other rough material? That probably has a great impact on how one carries one’s lines. I only use heavy, slick leather lines or synthetic “granite” biothane lines because they don’t tangle easily and they pay out smoothly without snagging or twisting. I use 3/4 to 1.25 inch wide lines, depending on the application. The 3/4 inch lines are definitely more prone to rolling.

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And I’m in the same camp as Carl and only tie my lines together when I’m plowing. When I’m on the hay wagon, however, I do often tie a little noose at the end of the lines and loop the noose over the post on the front of the rack. When I’m seated on a wagon, I sit on my lines with the tails of the lines on the floor/deck of the wagon behind me (assuming there’s no way for the tails to slip down between the decking boards or something). Otherwise, when driving on foot or riding a mower or cultivator or plow or such, I make big long loops of the excess line and hold them in my dominant hand.

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I feel that it is important to teach teamsters to demand that their horses stand for things like harnessing and hitching, just as they should demand that they stop when you say “Whoa”, lower their heads for bridling, or follow a feel with the bit. It always surprises me how many people make excuses for their horses’ inability to stand quietly when being harnessed or hitched.

Now, when you are working with the public, I imagine that would be a different matter and perhaps that’s where some of this line-holding comes in. There is what you expect from your horses and then there is taking every precaution to ensure the public’s safety.

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I’m fortunate enough in circumstance and hoof condition to not need shoes for the vast majority of the year, but that once or twice a year hurts the pocket book. If I needed shoes more often, I’d certainly make a greater effort to learn the farrier’s trade. But this once or twice a year thing makes me more interested in Easyboots than risking a hot nail and having a horse go lame at the wrong time. When I need my horses, I need them. I don’t have spares and I’m fearful of the learning curve.

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