# I want to Drive Tandem...(Maybe Im crazy!)



## stellabella (Oct 22, 2013)

Hey There,

I haven't been on here in quite a while, (I've been driving BIG horses).

But I've started working my minis again and I have this crazy passion about driving them tandem "some day". Well recent surcumstances have required me to work them more often(and get more exercise myself!). So I have started ground driving them tandem. It is going AMAZINGLY! They never fussed over it. Did everything I asked, and we all seemed to really enjoy it.... Down the rabbit hole I go....

So here are my questions....

I've decided to purchase a new pairs harness(because I only have 1 single harness they share right now).

The harness maker has agreed to make an extra set of longer traces for my leader, So i can use it pairs and tandem.

What lengh to leader traces need to be for a 32" mini??

What length are the Leader reins? 

'' '' Wheeler reins? 

Where on earth do I find a tandem whip in mini size?? (I tried a normal length horse whip but it was to clumsy and heavy)

I've done my research on safety and effectiveness... there seems to be differing opinions on roger rings vs. tandem rosetts. Which do you prefer?

What is the preffered/safest method for attaching leader to wheeler for minis? Tandem keys and cockeyes?

And finally, Is it important that I find all this hardware(roger rings, terrets, rossetts, etc) in mini size? Do they make such a thing?

Thanks!!! I'd love to see picture of other mini tandems!


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## Reignmaker Miniatures (Oct 22, 2013)

Its too bad Leia (hobbyhorse) isn't a regular here any more, I know she drove her boys tandem and she would I'm sure have some insight for you. I know almost nothing about driving tandem so will wait for those who do to offer you some advice(I'll be reading with interest tho)


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## stellabella (Oct 22, 2013)

Thanks, I have searched and read most of the old tandem topics, But I really need some help with the specifics on equipment. I want to invest in the right stuff and be SAFE! It really worries me seeing people driving tandems with harness held together by baling twine.


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## rabbitsfizz (Oct 23, 2013)

I have driven tandem but would consider myself a novice at it- the wheeler reins would be normal length and the leader reins need to be twice as long- not sure if you can buckle the reins in together as you do with a team but I never did. I used a swingletree to join the boys but I have to tell you I would not advise it now- it was made specifically for the team and it was well made but there was almost not way to prevent it banging on the wheeler's front or, even worse, knees. The wheel horse will need to have a bridle with rings like the check rein rings, on it to carry the lead horse reins. However you decide to join the horses together remember in tandem the lead horse should never be "in draught" . There is someone here in the UK who does a lot of serious tandem work with her shetlands, I could ask her if she would come on and help , if you wish.


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## Al B (Oct 23, 2013)

My advice would be to buy a Tandem harness. There is a lot of difference between the lead harness and the wheel harness. I can email you a picture of my Tandem but I don't have the technology to post it on here.

Driving a Tandem is a whole bunch of fun. That said, where are you located?


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## stellabella (Oct 23, 2013)

I am in CT. I plan to spend many hours ground driving them together in many settings so they gain some confidence together and learn their jobs before I think about hooking them. They are both enjoying it and act like they have been doing it forever.

I chose the pair harness so I can use them as a pair as well. The harness company agreed to make extra longer traces for the leader and add in the other lines, hardware, etc. I'm not overly concerned with it being completely authentic perfect presentation, I just want to be safe. But I need to know the correct length for the leader traces!!???


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## stellabella (Oct 23, 2013)

I'll take whatever advise or thoughts anyone has. I'm trying to collect the appropriate equipment and get them working well on the ground before I find a trainer to give me some tandem lessons and help hook them the first time!


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## Al B (Oct 24, 2013)

The leader traces are about 18" longer but you can just get some trace extensions. They buckle to the existing traces. Then get some Tandem Keys for the wheeler and you are all set.


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## rabbitsfizz (Oct 25, 2013)

Al is right, there is a lot of difference between pair and tandem harness. I worked with two single harnesses, and that was workable, but a pair harness has different breeching, if it has breeching at all, and would not work for the wheel horse.


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## stellabella (Oct 25, 2013)

I've worked with many pairs and teams, We were always able to convert those harnesses to single when we needed to school one horse. Add shaft loops and hold backs, take away the strap from collar to breetching. Is there something I'm really missing? I've done this with drafts and ponies...


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## rabbitsfizz (Oct 26, 2013)

Unless you buy a harness that is designed to switch then there are quite a few subtle differences- main one being the breastcollar on a single is not padded sufficiently nor does it have a heavier or strong enough "D" ring at the front to carry a pole. Also some pairs harness do not come with breeching (as we know it) mine did not....


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## hobbyhorse23 (Oct 29, 2013)

Decided to poke my nose in here for the first time in a long time and the first thing I see is my name! LOL. I had many of the same questions you do so I guess I can offer my limited experience.

First of all, those tandems you see being held together by baling twine ARE being safe. That is the professionally recommended way to start a tandem because if your leader freaks out or gets a leg over a trace baling twine will simply snap where thick leather traces would hold and potentially cause all sorts of problems. The sight of a new leader hopping on three legs and panicking, perhaps kicking the wheeler trying to get free, is a very scary one! The worst that will happen with baling twine is your leader gets free and you have to go collect him. Just make sure the leader reins do not have buckles; if they were to be attached to each other when he tried to bolt, the reins will get caught on the wheeler's terrets and yank his harness up under his tail, causing all sorts of problems and possible injury.

Baling twine also allows you to experiment with the correct lengths until you find what works for you. Just tie it shorter or let it out longer and try it out! As Fizz pointed out, the leader is not supposed to be in draught so the baling twine shouldn't have to take any weight except in case of emergency. (I doubled mine up just to be sure it didn't break unless I really needed it to as my leader is very forward and I knew keeping him out of draught was going to be problematic at first. LOL) Always carry a knife in your pocket and extra twine to splice things, as well as a header to handle the horses while you make repairs.

You mention ground-driving them everywhere for a long time before you first hitch. Most the time this is great advice and it's important that each horse is solid as a single before you begin, especially with "whoa" and "stand." But if both are accomplished driving horses I've been told it's best to simply hitch and go after an initial ground-drive or two as "walk" is definitely the hardest gait in tandem! The slower you're going, the more time there is for the horses to wiggle and get turned around and most horses aren't nearly as forward at the walk as they are at the trot. If it's working for you then that's great and keep right on going, but my instructors said it was easiest to simply hitch and then get moving in a large open area and let things work themselves out on the fly. As crazy as it sounds I found it to be true! That does assume that the driver is already familiar with tandem rein-handling however so if you're not, practice at a walk or on a rein-board is probably best before you try that.

As for harness, I have made one set of harness work for all three (single, pair and tandem) without too much problem. If you're only going for functional and safe rather than traditionally correct a tandem is really pretty easy to set up. Fizz is right that you can't easily convert a mini single harness to a comfortable pair arrangement but you CAN convert a pair harness to single and tandem with ease. I had the same breeching for single and pair, the only difference was the strap that connected them to either the cart or the breastcollar. To drive single I used shaft loops and holdbacks, to drive pair I changed it out to "cheater straps" on the tug billets (straps that did nothing but connect the tugs and the overgirth straps so they weren't flapping without the shaft loops buckled in) and side holdbacks between the breeching and pair breastcollars. To take the same harnesses tandem I put the shaft loops and holdbacks back on the wheeler harness, removed the breeching from the leader harness and replaced it with a set of shaft carriers (I cannibalized my kicking strap), kept the cheater straps and then changed out the traces to longer tandem ones. Then all you need is the reins and roger rings. More on that in a minute.

To answer your questions:

The length of the leader traces- Jane Moody says, "You want to be able to drive them with about 1/2 a pony length between them at a trot on contact. The wheeler will stretch his/her head down a bit at the walk, and you never want the wheelers front feet interfering with the leaders hind feet, even at a gallop." Play around with baling twine and see what the right distance is for your particular horses.

The leader reins need to be long enough to cover the extra distance from the bit of the wheeler to the bit of the leader plus the length of the wheeler reins. Not trying to be facetious but it's different for everyone! I tried to get a concrete answer when I started and nobody had one for me. Someone said 18ft, I ended up measuring my favorite single reins and then literally measuring the distance between my two horses when they were hitched up tandem-style.

Wheeler reins are normal single reins.

For a whip I used an old lunge whip I had with a broken off shaft, I know friends who had them custom made by UltraLite Whips or used the telescoping whip I think Ideal Harness carries.

Roger rings versus tandem rosettes: I have some old coaching books that talk about these but as I recall it tandem rosettes were the original way to do things. They kept the reins firmly where they were supposed to be and worked very well with a couple of high-strung, high-stepping coach horses going down a straight road with their heads checked up high and steady. The problem with tandem rosettes is that if your wheeler tosses his or her head a lot the leader will get jerked in the mouth, and if the leader swings around sharply the wheeler's head gets pulled around pretty hard. You can see in this photo how many changes of direction the lines make with tandem rosettes, even with minis.






I prefer the gentler line made by Roger rings.






(Ignore the fact my leader was totally falling in, we'd only been driving tandem about 30 seconds in that shot. LOL)

As checks fell out of favor and people started getting into doing tandem for CDE and similar cross-country endeavors someone came up with the bright idea of roger rings. These rings are attached by straps and give quite a bit more play depending on the design, allowing for changes in the elevation of the wheeler's head without effecting the leader and easing the pull of those tight turns. I personally prefer roger rings but in my limited playing with my own tandem didn't get the opportunity to experiment and see which version would work best (crownpiece attachment, throatlatch attachment, long throatlatch attachment). I know the last time I drove the straps on my make-shift rings ended up longer than I meant them to be and they kept flipping up over my wheeler's head on turns, which got awkward fast. I think perhaps the type that attach to the throatlatch would be worth trying, or have a set that tie together loosely under the jowl so they can't flip up but can still swing out to the side.

Safest method of attaching leader to wheeler to me is one Breanna Sheahan showed me. She used modern quick release snap shackles to connect the ring on the wheeler's breastcollar to the ring on the back of the leader traces which meant that when someone hopped a leg over a trace and it was under tremendous pressure, not only did you NOT have to cut the harness, NOT have to risk fingers fighting with a snap or buckle, and NOT have to wrangle a panicked horse while you did so, but it only took moments to release the trace in question and hook it back up again. Very important on a cross-country marathon where seconds count! Not that speed is going to matter to you particularly, but it is a safe and sensible way to do it with a green tandem. QR snap shackles are meant to release when under pressure while regular snaps require slack.

As far as hardware sizes, I think Breanna used pony-sized stuff and that worked fine. I have a leather tandem harness for minis I purchased used complete with tiny tandem rosettes, wheeler terrets, etc., but simply found it was hard to get all those reins and buckles through such small openings. Most people I know don't bother with the wheeler terrets as they really don't seem to be necessary on such a small setup.



stellabella said:


> Thanks!!! I'd love to see picture of other mini tandems!


 This was the very first tandem I was ever privileged to drive back in 2009. My friend Breanna Sheahan (minihgal) needed a navigator for her Preliminary VSE tandem so I flew down to Shady Oaks in Lodi, CA to join her at a clinic. After getting a driver's eye view while she drove the full cross-country course with them I was handed the reins and coached through it by an expert. It was so much fun!






Then at the National Drive in Kentucky a month later (yes, I got around that year!) I helped a friend put her two mares together in a tandem for the first time. They were amazing and both their owner and I were grinning like loons before long.











You can see I put sliding side reins on the lead mare because she kept trying to throw her head up dangerously above the bit and since it was the last day of the drive I didn't have time to fix the habit and still get the tandem together. The sliding side reins reminded her to reach forward and down but didn't interfere otherwise and we were able to take them off after a little while once she remembered how she was supposed to be acting.

To be continued, too many pictures apparently.


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## hobbyhorse23 (Oct 29, 2013)

And finally, bittersweet, here is my own tandem their first time out in June 2012. I waited three years for this moment while Turbo (my wheeler) grew up from a yearling and got to drive them this way precisely three times before he died just short of five years old this spring. Both times I tried there was a malfunction with my helmet-cam so I never did get video of what it was like. It was amazing though and I so wish we'd been able to continue doing it.





















What happens when your leader knows how to extend and your wheeler doesn't yet. LOL






Kody mostly stayed out of draught after the initial confusion but I didn't have my snap shackles attached quite right and they bounced, making the baling twine traces look funny in quite a few of the photos. Didn't seem to bother the horses though and it smoothed out as we got our spacing sorted.

Their second time as a tandem in Sept. 2012.






Leia


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## studiowvw (Oct 30, 2013)

wow, such cool stuff!

So sorry for your loss.


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