Danger I hear what you are saying but, when I was little my "bible" was Black Beauty- this is where I learned to see things from the horses point of view, not ours.
I have taken Blinders off a horse that had been driven in them for ten years, and never in an open bridle.
He came alive- his owner said it was like driving a new horse.
I have never harness trained a horse in blinders and I have never put them on because they were needed- thay have never been needed, you see.
Correctly trained horses do not panic when they see a cart following - why should they??
I have, however, had a gelding I started panic badly, and wreck the cart , at a show, when something he could not see went by- his owners had bought a harness with blinders and had just shoved it on him for the show.
The very experienced driving people who caught the wreck pulled the bridle off straight away and he stopped dead and stood still.
We underestimate horses all the time.
Your Grand-Dad was working in another era- in those days horses that I would not bother training o harness
had to be worked as that was what horses did, they worked.
In those days it was easier to bung blinders on everything.
I was born just at the end of "those days" and I remember them and horses working in harness everyday.
It was a different world and things were different.
Nine times out of ten a horse does not
need blinders, believe me.
They do no actual harm, unlike check reins which do a lot of harm and I cannot for the life of me see any good that they do- you will not find a check rein on any UK harness.
I use one of my in hand bridles form the Shetland days for my harness bridle- it looks exactly like a driving bridle but has no blinders in it.
Sorry to hi-jack the thread, I did not mean to turn this into an argument, or even a discussion about the pros and cons of various harness bits
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