I’m looking into a harness for my mare. I’m hoping to show the morgan show here in Ontario (life goal would be to do states) and also maybe some local shows in pleasure and maybe dressage. Can you show in a comfy fit harness? I’m getting the leather padding and patient as well. I just want to make sure I don’t spend this money to find out I can’t show in it. I’m located in Ontario Canada
Hi MNA12! We also live in Ontario and show at some local shows, but mainly we show in the US in CDE’s and some Pleasure Shows.
What do you plan on doing with your morgan? Breed shows? Pleasure Shows? CDE’s? What type of carriage do you have?
We tend to show in our leather harness with collars hooked to our phaeton (for dressage/cones and pleasure shows), but you can show in a comfy fit harness and marathon carriage at most CDE’s up to a certain level. I will be showing in all 3 phases at my next CDE with my young pony in my comfy fit harness and marathon carriage, which is totally acceptable.
Some pleasure shows now have a utility class and you can show with a marathon carriage and harness. More and more shows are offering this class as not everyone has leather harness/presentation carriage. It all depends on what you really want to do.
IMHO, if you only can afford or want one type of harness (for everyday use), I’d say go with a comfy fit harness and look for utilty type classes for pleasure shows. If you want to do breed classes, you might want to see what the rules are as I don’t think you would be able to use that for those shows.
For driven dressage classes, a comfy fit harness and marathon carriage would be totally fine as well!
I’m not exactly sure why the “comfy fit” wouldn’t be appropriate? Looks like a lot of other harnesses out there.
One question: since you’re using a cart, you should be using floating (gig) tugs—does comfy fit make this type of saddle & tugs?
You can definitely show in a comfy fit harness! I love mine, I was just hosing it off yesterday and being thankful I wasn’t cleaning/conditioning a leather harness.
You can order comfy fit in all kinds of lovely combos, like black lined in brown, looks like leather unless you touch it.
Much in harness choices depends on the kind of shows you want to compete in. At lower level things, often less is expected from a competitor. CDE is kind of a lesser expectation at lower levels, so synthetic harness, well fitted, is acceptable. Coaching is all about the highest standards, no shortcuts. Judges themselves can expect more from competitors at higher levels, both in CDE and Pleasure showing, so that means leather harness. It is kind of old school, traditional, in expected appearance for competition. Leather means you did your work, got things prepared to compete. In really old thinking of you, “laid your hands on things”, went carefully over them in cleaning, conditioning, to check stitching, buckles, leather itself, to find weak or broken places BEFORE anything broke. This is good horsemanship. You can miss a lot just hosing harness ofF with things being so easy-care.
Much information is found in the Rulebook for breeds, ADS,pleasure driving, pertaining to harness style with expected vehicles, gaits, style of horse, in a named class. You would not show up for a Gig class driving a Runabout. You need to have the named spares, accessories, for your vehicle in a Turnout class. You don’t drive a russet harness to a natural vehicle with black trim. Russet harness means vehicle needs brown trim. Many of these rules came from the past but are spelled out in the Rulebook so new folks can learn the correct way of doing things. I learn every time I review the rules, some new detail will catch my eye that I never knew or had forgotten. Just an amazing amount of information to be found in the Rules
Clothing is restrained, often called “church clothes” as the style for ring classes, Dressage and Cones at CDEs. Driving did not have Marathons when horses were the main method of transport, so rules there are evolving, no old tradition to use. People used to have much more practice dressing to fit their activities at church, work, school, show clothing, so they could blend when they went places. It helped people be comfortable in various sttings, knowing they have the right horse equipment, clothing to blend with everyone else. Driving is still doing that with harness, vehicles and clothing, using these standards of expectation. You don’t stick out in a bad way. When you are doing an anachronistic activity, many of your rules are not modern thinking!
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“Russet harness means vehicle needs brown trim. Many of these rules came from the past but are spelled out in the Rulebook so new folks can learn the correct way of doing things.”
And, just to confuse things, a russet collar can be used with anything, even a black harness. Go figure. Russet tends to be more expensive, you can’t hide mediocre leather with russet, vs. just black polish/stain hiding a multitude of problems. I like russet.
