pulling contests

[jac]

Guys I notice a few of you go in for pulling contests. We dont have those over here and I was wondering how your horses and ponies go back to ordinary work.. Do they snatch the load in anticipation of a heavy pull ? does it make them more jumpy in a wagon for example ?.
John

[mitchmaine]

hi john, years ago, maine was full of pulling horses. some successful and some not so. and an unsuccessful pulling horse, even tho they went through the same “training program” weren’t much good for anything else. except they were readily available and cheap. and lots of them went back in the woods. and were worth exactly what you paid for them. the minute you dropped your guard and rattled a chain they thought all hell was about to descend upon them and they were gone, and you too if you were in the wrong spot. starting a big load is the whole game and hitting the load with everything you have is the training. you can only imagine what that involved. that same energy in the woods ain’t so bad, but on a plow or a mower, no good. every year they have to get biger and stronger, til they don’t even look like horses to me. i know too much about this subject to give it a kind word. maybe others have a different idea.

[jac]

Hey Mitchmaine.. thanks for that, I kinda suspected the after effects wouldnt be very conducive to mowing:).. I bought a gelding about 5 years ago that had spent his life in the woods and must’v been asked to start some big loads coz when I first hitched him in the wagon and gave him the message….lets just say dragsters leave the line slower!!! and I had months of trying to get him off that carry on. Even yet he sometimes forgets and I usualy try and start them by side stepping 1st.. dont think I’ll ever get him in the plough.. my two mares can do that. Cheers..
John

[jac]

ordineraly i’d agree Joel but the other 3 are great..2 of them home trained.. and i know the horses history and he was treated less than good.. Its a true saying that horses arnt born bad .. humans do that. cheers
John

[blue80]

The team we previously owned were Belgian mares. One mare, Liza was well known for her pulling exploits. She and a gelding actually won the Denver pull in ’98, and there was a vhs among the Amish which showed her at some pulls.
Her colts have become in great demand.

This mare, Liza, was extremely gentle, both as a broodmare and pulling logs, stumps, stone boat, harrows, and wagons full of kids. I trusted her conistency far more than the registered belgian she was paired with, and she was never jumping into the collar.

I miss her a lot.

[mitchmaine]

hey blue, thanks for your note. i spoke hastily out of passion. permit me to tell you the story of “rock” the pulling horse from west forks, maine. a true legend. he was owned by dick wallingford and pulled back in the 60’s and early 70’s here. you only had to see him or be around him to know you were around royalty. truth. this horse was something else. perfect when pulling single. he had wide shoulders. a huge neck, and no arse. he would lower himself down in the front till he was almost even with the ground and start digging. no thrashing, just an even pull. you’d cry just to see it. i watched him outpull 20 horses at cumberland fair and at the end they loaded him up to just under ***** pounds and he pullede it six feet. i wrote that number down and crossed it out cause i saw him do it, but i couldn’t beleive it myself. dick made a magnesium hame with double hame straps just for that horse. they kept trying to match him and came close with a michigan horse half again his size with an extra two links on the evener,that cost $16,000, in 1971. rock was something else again, and when they retired him they made him a horse blanket out of his blue ribbons that hung to the ground. what a horse.

[mitchmaine]

one more note on the subject. some horse have heart and are actual athletes. alot of horses were ruined trying to make something out of them they couldn’t or shouldn’t be. when they lose their faith in man (and i know the look) nothing restores it. this i am certain of.

[mink]

i’ve heard some guys say at the horse pulls here in new york that some of the horses know when their at a pull . they say the same horses act completely different when their hooked up to something with a pole.i always had respect for the guy that could bring his team around and hook with no problem as opposed to the ones that took 2 or 3 tries to get hooked…….mink

[grey]

I’ve seen some calm pulling teams that quietly knuckle down and reel in the blue ribbons, and then go easily to the plowing competition with their old and creaky owners at the lines at both venues.

I have also seen hot, unruly teams that bring home the blue ribbons that have a whole squad of men to harness, drive, hold, and hitch at the weight pull competition and that can be used for nothing else.

[simon lenihan]

jac,
[ quote, i bought a gelding about 5 years ago that spent its life in the woods] just wondering if this was a clyde and if it came out of scotland.
simon lenihan

[mother katherine]

mitchmaine
What a grreat idea – to make Rock a blanket out of his ribbons.
If he pulled at Fryeburg in the early 70’s, I probably saw him. There were some great teams and teamsters. Then there were the guys who just came and ……
oxnun

[jac]

Hi Simon.. Yes a black Clyde.. Bought him up at Perth. He’s a fair age now, but really likes his work. He was running in mud the day we went to see him and rather thin.. We paired him up with our bay horse.. thats the two of them in the foto galery at the street parade last year.. As I said it took months to get him right .. he ok now and only now and again he does a less than perfect start in the wagon..
John

[dominiquer60]

I don’t know too much about pulling, but even as a kid at the fair my money was on the oldest quiet guy with the biggest quietest horses. In this picture, http://www.draftanimalpower.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=901&d=1265084434the perch had been to a pulling contest the weekend before and doing a plowing demo at NEAPFD. We led him because he had never plowed single before and we wanted to concentrate on getting the plow tuned up, and Sam wasn’t worried about training him for something he would likely never do again. It would seem that there are work horses that can pull well and some pulling horses that can’t work at all.

Erika

[mitchmaine]

mother katherine, if you were at fryeburg in the early 70’s for the sweepstakes, you saw rock. they retired him in skowhegan in 73(?) and nobody expected it. dicks wife made and brought out his blanket, and they put it on him and he knew everything that was going on.they took a picture and he was so proud. not a tall hoss but he was that day. mink….there is what they call ringsmart up here, and its when a horse finds out he can’t get licked in a show ring like he can at home and balks up. is that what you mean? grey…..it’s been a long time since somebody hooked his own horse in a pull, and a few are missing toes from the quick starts, but we have farmer’s pulls now and the teamster HAS to hook himself. those are fun. there were teams and teamsters back that went in quiet, pulled, won, and left. i think that was the day a man spent his whole week and year with those hosses. another day.

[mink]

mitch here they have the driver and 2 helpers each holding one side of the evener . what i was refering to was the team that could just come around the boat back up and drop the evener with no problem at all. in my mind that shows a guy that hasnt abused his horses. some horses are so high strung that they cant get hooked without a struggle , sometimes 2 or 3 passes are needed as when the horses hear just the slightest clink of metal they just about turn inside out. like you say they have had some awful tune-ups at home……mink

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