Leia, I enjoy reading your posts. Couple of questions for you...I guess I should have posted them to this breeching topic...I have read several ways people adjust their breeching like fastening the traces first and pushing the cart back until the traces have no slack in them and setting your breeching to keep the cart there with one hand inbetween the horses body and the breeching. When they say hand, do they mean the flat of the hand or the hand standing on edge? I know where the breeching goes...someone commented almost in a straight line with the stifle, right below the highest part of the muscle..not too high, not too low. Also, I am going to test drive a mare that is older and very expericenced, very broke to the cart and she goes down the roads just beautifully...just what I need. She has been on trail rides and down roads, parades, etc, but it must have been pretty flat as she has never had breeching on. If I purchase her, would you suggest me ground driving her and lunging her with the breeching on then going to the cart? I think the lady just put it on the mare and she didn't react but I have no idea how tight she set it...I sent her a website and some instructions. I live where there is a lot of hills...pretty steep at times and breeching is a must for me. Also a kick strap...I learned that lesson. The mare has never had a kick strap on and never had any bucking and kicking but after what happened to me, I just don't think I will drive without one...you just never know and it's cheap insurance...and if it is on them correctly they move freely and don't really know it's there. Thank you in advance. Michele
Breeching is always such an interesting issue.
I'm a great fan of it and use it almost all the time but then again I do a tremendous amount of trail driving and cross-country work where it would be nearly suicidal to go without it. It is standard equipment on a carriage driving style harness just as a check is standard on a fine-harness style turnout.
For the first person breeching would be my solution to keep horse and driver safe as the driver learns how to ask for soft transitions and how to correctly adjust the rest of their harness. For the second person, well, if they prefer to use fewer straps then I guess I don't really have a problem with that.
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My final thought on the subject of using breeching for ring driving is to respectfully suggest you include the breeching in the initial training rather than adding it later. It is very easy to take the breeching off and continue to drive the horse with no further lessons, but a horse who has been driven without breeching may object rather violently the first time he feels something pressing on his rump. Margo C-T shared a story a few years ago about an experienced show mini that went trail driving with breeching for the first time and the resulting wreck was not pretty. It is better, in my mind, to introduce the breeching with all the other new things at the start so the horse accepts it as simply part of the deal.
Leia
P.S.- If you haven't considered using a bucking strap on your green driving horse, do a search on the forum for "kicking strap" and read up on it. It's a great safety device and can be used with or without breeching.
