I am very excited and wanted to share this with people. Here is a couple pictures of the progress I have made with the 2 Haflingers. A couple months ago these 2 guys did not know each other and I knew close to nothing about driving a team (still don’t but the learning curve is very steep). Tank (on the left side of the hitch) was very “hitchy” and, at 6’4”, I still had a hard time walking fast enough to keep up with him: as soon as you gave him slack in the lines he would keep cranking up the pace. Arnie (Arno) is barely 4yo and was green broke to drive. He was, is, pretty jumpy about things and his and my first experience working together consisted with him dragging me 100’ by his mouth when I tried having him drag a tire down the gravel road. I quickly saw the error in my ways and went to building up from just ground driving in a round pen to eventually dragging that tire all around. Now Arnie is MUCH more comfortable with noise behind him and I think I am better at introducing new noises to him. I worked with Tank to get him to be more responsive to the bit, I think what helped the most was concentrating on communicating with him with only the bit (I read some things in “Farming with Horses” that really helped).A couple weeks ago I ground drove them together in the round pen and gradually built them up to dragging a tire together. I set them up with a yoke and a butt chain. With the help of Paulette I opened up a panel on the round pen and drove them out into the GREAT BIG WORLD!! All I could think about was how easy Arnie pulled me when he spooked, I had no hope holding these guys if they decided to run. Paulette had a lead rope on Arnie’s halter and we all walked around the outside of the pen and across the field a couple times. The next day we hooked them to the forecart. With Paulette on a lead rope we successfully made a couple laps around the field. It was not a well oiled machine if you know what I mean. Tank was way out front and I could not get him slowed down, Arnie continued to wiggle all over the place, it appeared to me they were as nervouse as I was. Let me say I had so many things in my head I was trying to keep strait; I am sure I was 90% of the problem. How is it that something that most people would see as boring can border on terrifying?
Yesterday i decided I wanted to have them pull the stone boat with the water buckets to the barn, by my self. I ground drove Arnie around a little, hooked the 2 together, with a butt chain and a yoke, ground drove them around, dragged the evener and finally hooked to the stone boat and hauled the water to the barn – we took a couple laps around the field on our way to the barn. They stood really well while being hooked as well as when loading the water buckets, didn’t
spook at the stone boat breaking the ¼” ice crust all the way as we went across the field; what made me smile the most was Tank was staying aligned with Arnie, I felt like he was taking pace control from light pressure of the bit. I have to say I am very pleased and feel like, with work, these 2 will be nice ponies to work with.
Arnie and Tank tied to the barn waiting for me to unload the water buckets.
