WOW! Thanks for the great explanation! Man, I feel bad for those horses. And I sure wish they wouldn’t bob their tails.what do they use to swat flies? I would still love to have these fainting horses on a cardiac minutes to see what is happening, perhaps they get a lack of oxygen which stresses their heart? Or, maybe there are even a few out there that can’t take the strain due to some sort of genetic cardiac or pulmonary defect?
[QUOTE=goodhors;5458012]
Draft horses use sidechecks, while light horses mostly use overchecks, which force the nose out. The light horse overcheck is from the driven racing, to KEEP his nose and airway open during competition. A Standardbred who puts his nose down, loses the oxygen fuel needed for real speed by crimping his throat airway. He will lose races.
Saddlebreds, Arab, Hackney, some Morgan classes, also want some FIRE in the ring. Often with speed thrown in, so they NEED the oxygen to be able to display that. Helps that all are up-headed breeds, and checking them up with overchecks does change the action they show. Showing them you will see the running martingales to aid driver prevent from horse sticking nose straight out in front, throwing head upward to avoid the bit. Most of these animals will also have a MUCH cleaner throatlatch, to allow the more vertical headset wanted in the show ring, yet not cut off the windpipe in moving.
Draft horses in the past, NEEDED to be able to put heads down to pull a load. Loosely fit sidechecks will allow horse to bend and lower head for a pull, but help prevent horse getting in trouble in a long days work, when driver may leave them unattended. Sidechecks work with a different leverage, using almost a pulley leverage system to bend horse at the throatlatch, folding the windpipe.
Drafts in most cases, are WELL-FED, have heavy, thick necks, wth very thick throatlatchs. When checked high, face trying to be vertical between reins and sidecheck, I don’t believe they can possibly get enough oxygen to work as expected. Sounds like the local steam locomotive going by! So fainting from lack of air, along with other mentioned air blockages like a tongue going back, sounds reasonable. As with any device, if a little checking is good, more is better! So checking up show horses who really were not moving working loads to be flashier, has become common practice. Most observers just see power and size, not “how” the horses are unbalanced. The Amish farmers don’t check the working draft horses up high, they can’t pull a load or get their days work done!
Black Beauty was written to point out cruelties of the time that horses had to deal with, and high checking was one of the issues covered. Look at the carriage photos of the time, with “notables” beside the vehicles or driving down the avenues. The book “Carriages At Eight” REALLY covers a lot of the Victorian Age issues in London, that using horses daily involved. Horses down in the roads from high checking, couldn’t keep their feet under them, then being devalued from scarred knees, gets mentioned. No one wants a horse who goes down, obvious with his marked “broken knees”, so they went cheap, as they slid down the scale in being desirable animals.
The high checking is now part of the Draft scene, expected of those wanting to win. Checking tightly, then making horses work for longer times, pulling bigger loads, will transfer the stresses to body parts not made to take them. Backs are hollowed out, legs taking big impact from off-balance animals, is going to shorten their working lives for the ring. Never have understood the bad shoeing they wanted on drafts?? Scotch bottoms for ALL! Designed for Clydes, doesn’t work that well except on Clydes!! And then you just bondo any other problems away, cover with a coat of hoof blacking for the ring!!
And maybe it is local, but the younger horses are easier to manage, not ALWAYS trained that well. BUT young ones can be forced, muscled into doing as desired. Having young horses working hard and forced into unnatural body carriage during work, is going to hurt them as they develop. Maybe as they age, horses start refusing to work at all, like laying down or more severe reactions, because thehitching and going to work hurts them.
We have quite a few draft horse folks around, so you pickup stuff without working at it. Quite a few brag about their hitches, how they train, and it is not pretty! Others really do their homework, horses are solid, but unwilling to go to the extremes needed to win so they just get ribbons, not the big money. Scariest are the Tandems, usually a 2yr old as Leader, because they can move faster to stay ahead! Drivers brag on how few times they have been hitched, just bounce the Tandem off the ring walls. Tandems usually only EVER hitched at shows, not practiced at home, so they have plenty of fire with youngster running from big horse chasing him/her!!
And these are not the backyard folks, but big money hitches, doing this stuff locally!
As with any “specialty”, Drafts, light horses, Western in all it’s forms, English including all the Disciplines, there are things that can be improved. No horse activity is lily-white in how they do things, so no stone throwing should be done. Sure would not want the Peta folks getting the people believing horses should all “be free” and never used. Horses would be gone really fast.[/QUOTE]
