First time in harness

[romewhip]

Jake wore a harness for the first time last night. Nothing has been adjusted to actually fit him, and I deliberately left some straps flapping for debugging purposes. He didn't even flinch at any of it, including the crupper! He's such a good pony. I have to cut down my poles a little to fit him, then when I do that I'll get the harness adjusted to fit him properly and we'll start driving in poles and drag. It's hard to take cell phone pics and hold on to the pony- these are terrible!

 

[MyMiniGal]

Aw, he looks good and not bad at all, for the first time. How fun.

 

[Marsha Cassada]

Very handsome! Looking forward to hearing of his progress.

 

[paintponylvr]

That's awesome. Yes, think I took about 20 cell phone pics (good practice or bad person?) before I got a couple I'd even consider using online...

Actually Jake looks really good. Thank you for sharing!!

 

[romewhip]

I broke one of my own rules about steady progression when training- instead of using poles which I need to make and haven't had the time for I went ahead and hitched Jake. He pulled like he already knew what he was doing! He even pulled a passenger around the arena while I walked him. In the midst of all this training he's also moved from one barn to another, and handled the move like a total pro. He met many new people, and they have all been surprised how friendly and calm he is.

Now we'll backtrack a little and reinforce the ground driving lessons, and we're looking for something to make an arena drag out of. One suggestion was mattress springs, we could easily mount a small platform to stand on and use that. The new barn doesn't have an arena drag. Any ideas are welcome... Paula?

 

[paintponylvr]

A friend and I used what we had on hand. Her and her hubby are very handy and have lots of tools and equipment (I don't...!). They stretched chain link fencing across a wooden frame and attached a heavy duty eye to attach either a single tree or a double tree to It for pulling.

I didn't do it that way and my chain link "drag" didn't last as long... It got all "bent up" and "ruint",

But it did work. If you can say that old, 2x removed from chain link yard fencing, fence can be ruined. I attached the chain link to a pvc pole, threw two tires on the chain link to weight it and attached two separate single trees for the mares to pull (I didn't have a double tree yet. Got that two months after these pics were taken).

A chain link gate (if you have an extra on hand) has the metal frame already in place. Any criss cross type fencing works for an arena drag on sand, or if you are purchasing - the best is one of those flexible tine harrows made for an arena or dethatching... Could even use a stock panel - that I used to put the manure tubs on. I noticed that when it went over manure piles in the pasture it separated and broke them up very, very nicely!!

Actually, even a weighted tire (I have one that is for mobile homes with a much heavier steel rim) works pretty well to even out the ridges in an arena... Vicki uses a "regular" one (I think).

 

[romewhip]

Thanks Paula! I knew you'd have the answer- I like the wood frame with chain link idea. This will just be the indoor arena, and I think that would last pretty well. I bet there's enough stuff laying around here to make something like that. With the wood frame I can even make a bit of a platform to stand on, so pony gets serious exercise on top of doing work. I can make a singletree easy, so we'll be set!

I've also seen some setups where the drag attaches to the back of a cart, but I kind of like the idea of making Jake pull some different things- cart, arena drag, tires, etc.

 

[paintponylvr]

If just pulling - pulling the tarp works too when the are starting. That pole used for the chain link had had a tarp wrappd around it and screws w/ washers set to keep them from ripping thru. The tarp could have leaves stacked, loaded on I and the single tree attached to the pole. Here'sa pic of our grand daughters' on a tarp during clean up at the local show arena.

I did find, that for us, the wrap and attach with screws worked better than the tieing at the grommets like above...

Here's one of our ponies pulling a tarp. She started out good (quiet) and then got upset, then went on to being quiet again.