Driving 3 horses!

Today was a great day!!!  My friend Pat and I had made plans to try and drive his 3 horses in the 3 abreast formation.  He had never done this, and I felt honored that he asked me to come over and help him out.  He has 3 gorgeous Belgian mares.  They are all over 17 hands tall.  They all knew how to work, and just needed to be tried in this new formation.

I got there, and first we went about harnessing up 3 horses.  Talk about time consuming.  I'm used to doing one.  It took us at least an hour to brush them all, and get them harnessed up.  It went smooth though, and having 2 people sure helped.  Things go much faster with more hands.

The first thing we decided to do, was wear out his greenest horse.  Dolly, who is 4, is the least well trained, so she and Ruthie (a seasoned pro) got hitched up as a team on the sled.  Pat did a few laps around his pasture with them, and it succeeded in wearing that hyper edge off them.

I was very impressed with how well trained Pat's horses are.  They are very responsive to voice.  Dolly had a few moments where she would try to act out, but a harsh tone in the voice would put her back in line.

Riley and I got to ride along, and Riley was really impressed with those big horses in front of us.

After we wore that initial edge off Dolly and Ruthie, we parked them, and decided it was time to try ground driving the 3 girls together.

How we had determined to do this, was to use keep Dolly and Ruthie hooked together as a team with a yoke.  We would then use a jockey stick to hold the 3rd horse (Cathy) in line.

Pat had 2 different triple tree's we could use.  We chose to use the oldest one for the ground driving.

The oldest triple tree had all 3 single tree's even together.  All these tied to eveners that kept them all hooked together.

This ended up not working well.  First, we had Cathy's jockey stick adjusted too long (see the pictures), then the triple tree was so old, that it just had some j style hooks.  We found that the tugs had a hard time staying on these.

We also drug a chain on the single tree, just so we had a little weight on it.  The chain also worked well when getting the girls off the fence.  I would pull back on it while we got the girls all turned in the right direction.  This worked well in keeping the rig from getting under their feet.

Pat's newer triple tree had an evener between two horses, then a third evener that went over to the 3rd horse.  This had much better o-ring type connectors that kept the chains from coming off.

After hooking this one up, things went much better.

We also adjusted Cathy's jockey stick to go from her outside bit, to the opposite side bottom hame ring on the center horse.  This worked well and kept the girls a nice distance apart.

With the girls performing well on the ground, we determined to try out the sled.

We took the tongue off the sled, and hooked the evener up.  The girls did VERY good here!!  They really worked too!

Things ended up awesome!

I think my favorite part was when Pat let me have a turn at the reigns.  This was awesome!

I took the reigns and got to feel what it was like to be driving 3 horses.  It was great.  Pat's horses are very light on the rein, and they immediately respond to voice commands.  I was very impressed with the immediate right and left turns when they heard Gee or Haw.

It was definitely a treat.

We drove the girls till they were VERY tired.

As we headed up the pasture the last time, they were REALLY dragging.  We determined that they had had enough, and that we would be done.

Then came the un-attaching, un-harnessing, and brushing.  That took a bit of time, but once again, went easy with 2.  The horses soon found themself back in their paddock with a fresh half bale of hay each.  They looked very excited to get it too!

What a great day!  I had a ball, and am so glad that Pat invited me over.  I think that driving horses is a blast, and like my friend Roger from Paris told me, it's even more fun when you have another person with you that likes it like you do.  I find this to be very true.  I have fun alone for sure, but I have an even better time when I'm working alongside Roger, or Pat.

Here are some video clips.  The resolution is very small (my first time using my cell phone for video.  Enjoy though!






Pat was also kind enough to sell me some hamestraps, and loan me a double tree and yoke that I can use when working Lily and Pam.  Very generous of him, and I appreciate it very much!

What a great day!  Thanks Pat!!