Riding and Driving

by Edward L. Anderson; Price Collier

PLATE XXII.—SINGLE HARNESS

It is not easy, except by long experience, to tell good leather at a glance. One authority says that good leather should "be solid, but not hard; mellow, but not soft." The black leather in a harness should have a smooth surface, close texture, and when bent between the hands should not show minute cracks.

The collar is the keystone of the pulling part of the harness. It should fit to a nicety, every horse having his own collar as much as the coachman should have his own boots. The collar should be lined with some non-porous material, preferably soft leather—even thin patent leather is good and easily cleaned. If the collar is too wide, it will rub the shoulders; if too short, it will choke the horse; if rounded at the top, it will press on and gall the withers. Usually the collar that will go over a horse's head will fit as to width, and is long enough when four fingers, held vertically, will go between the collar and neck, when the head is held in its usual position. The sides of the upper part of the collar, as well as the sides over the shoulders, should be well filled out, to prevent the rubbing of the point of the collar on the withers. In cases where the horse has an unusual conformation of head and neck a collar opening at the top is a convenience—one or two such collars should be kept in every stable. Collars may be either straight or curved back, the latter variety showing off the horse's neck to advantage.

The hames must, of course, fit the collar; and the draught-eye in the hames, to which the tug is attached, should be placed so that the pull comes upon the muscles of the lower part of the shoulder-blade, or at a point where this large bone is narrowest. Usually hame-rings are placed too low by a full inch on the hames when fitted to the collar. This is important, as it puts the draught where the horse can most easily apply most power and leaves his shoulders as free as though the collar were not there. The incline of the trace from the collar, so far as applied mechanics are concerned, matters little so long as it is not too high nor too low; but as a wheel meets with friction and obstructions up and over which it must be pulled, it is an advantage to have the trace decline from the collar to the vehicle.

It is well to put the collar on some minutes before the horse is to be used in it, so that his neck and shoulders may be warmed for their work; and it is absolutely essential to sound skin on neck and shoulders that the collar should be left on the horse five or ten minutes after his return, hot from work. Pads or saddles should fit as well as collars and should be placed just back of the shoulders, where the muscles are no longer prominent. If horses were saddled twenty minutes before they were wanted, and only unsaddled—girths of course being loosened—twenty minutes after their return to the stable, these precautions, and a liberal use of alcohol rubbed into the skin, would lessen materially the number of sore backs. A Dutch collar, or breastplate, is sometimes used in light harness instead of a neck collar. In the case of a horse with sore shoulders this is a convenience, or a horse with graceful neck and shoulders in the lead of a tandem shows off better with such a collar. But for draught it is not as good as the neck collar.

To the hames on the collar is fastened the tug, to the tug the trace, which at its other end is fastened finally to the vehicle. Of the length of tugs and traces it is to be said that they should be of such length that the back-band lies on the middle of, not in front or behind, the pad, when the horse is pulling. The reason for this is that otherwise the horse will be pulling the vehicle, not by the trace, but by the back-band. Many illustrations of this awkwardness may be seen wherever you see horses in harness.

Of the particular fastenings of tugs to hames, and of traces to vehicles,—these must depend upon the type of vehicle, and had best be left to the choice of the technically experienced. But it is every owner's business to see to it that these draught portions of the harness are strong and of the proper length. In the case of traces in a coach harness, the inside trace should be about half a hole shorter than the outside trace to make the draught even, and the convenient way to do this is to wrap the inside roller-bolt with leather, thus taking up more of the trace on that side, and saving the weakening of the trace by punching an extra hole in the tug end of it.

Good, strong, pliable reins, particularly of the length, 23 feet 6 inches, required for the lead-reins of a coach, are hard to get, but merit all the time and money spent in getting them. Of the size, viz. the width, of the reins, one writer says: "Medio tutissimus ibis," which back-of-the-dictionary Latin would apply equally well to a man's gloves or collars. If you have short fingers, the reins should be, say, three-quarters or seven-eighths of an inch wide; if long fingers, one inch wide or even a little more. A man with short fingers would be hampered, and his work in fingering four reins would be cramped, with wide reins.