Sorry if this is a dumb question. If I get a cart for a 12hand pony (shaft size 50-I believe), can that same carts shafts be later modified/shortened to accompany a miniature size horse?
It’s impossible to say without knowing what kind of vehicle you are looking at. I’ve seen some that would be adjustable and others not.
The roadster type vehicles only come in “horse” and “pony” sizes anyway… I don’t think the pony size would fit a mini, but I’ve never tried it…
But if we’re talking a wood-wheeled vehicle for outside the ring, the big danger in shortening shafts is wrecking the balance of the vehicle (assuming it’s a 2-wheeler we’re talking about) and thus inadvertently causing extra strain on the pony. You also have to take into account the wheel sizes needed for each pony. These vehicles are much much heavier and much much harder for a pony to pull, esp. uphill and downhill, than a lightweight bike is. Even just one inch variance in anything - harness adjustment, shaft length, wheel size - can make an enormous difference to your pony’s comfort.
Anybody got a link to that table of shaft lengths/wheel sizes that’s online somewhere?
Cart size table http://www.americandrivingsociety.org/DB_shaft_table.asp
Mini can be so many things, there is a big sifferance between a 34" mini and a 28" mini, a cart that fits a 34" mini might not even work for the 28" mini. A 48" pony is an average small Hackney Pony size and in general carts I’ve used for that size poony would be too large for a mini. If you go t the Jerald website you can see some specs on both pony and mini shor ing type vehicles http://www.jeraldsulky.com/content.php?pn=Show%20Horse%20Vehicles&pl=showhorses
War Admiral- thanks so much for guessing (accurately!) what the heck I’m talking about. I was thinking of a wooden 2 wheel cart for the 12H Hackney pony (coming with a roadster cart, that may need to be replaced) and then being able to use it at a later date for my mini’s that will be trained to drive.
Renae-thanks for the info, I’ll check out the link and measure my little ones (their quite small) doesn’t sound off hand like the same cart would work. I had heard the you were very knowledgeable in all this.
I’m going to try driving this Hackney pony a couple of times (hopefully this week) before I decide to definately take him, otherwise I’ll stick with the original plan of my 2 mini’s being trained to drive.
Thank you both for all the knowledge-priceless
Good luck, Hackeninnies are bunches of fun 
One thing that might work would be a 4-wheeled vehicle. Bob Cook has one that would do for a small pony or a mini pair and has both shafts and a pole. That way you wouldn’t have to worry so much about wheel height, balance, etc.
I would NOT suggest a 4-wheeler for a Hackaninny roadster pony who has never been outside. HERE THERE BE DRAGONS. Beware! :eek::winkgrin:
BYDM, the thing about 4-wheeled vehicles w/ a “green” pony (and while your Hackney is very experienced in the show ring, it definitely qualifies as “green” outside the ring) is that if the pony puts in a quick spin, a 4-wheeled vehicle can jackknife and flip over. Ideally you wanna avoid that. 
A 2-wheeler is by far the safer option b/c if Hackaninny spins, it just pivots on the inside wheel and follows the pony.
I’m not going to admit that I think that’s kinda fun, b/c Thomas will shoot me! :lol: (This is NOT to say you let your pony get away with it - you absolutely do NOT - but my experience is that it’s a lot easier to deal with a 180 spin in a 2-wheeler than it is when mounted…)
I hope all my joking around about the hotness of Hackney ponies hasn’t scared you off the little guy. If you are a confident, experienced horse person and willing to take time to train, pony is probably going to be FINE outside the arena given enough ground driving time.
If I were in your position, what I would probably do is go ahead and get the road pony type harness, stick w/ the jog cart, and learn to drive Mr. Hackaninny in the ring first. There’s no reason you can’t do cones and arena hazards with him in the ring to build up your steering skills and get him used to stepping off the rail.
Simultaneously with doing that, I’d be ground driving Mr. Hackaninny alllllllllllllllllll over the place to see what he’s going to do out there and give him some experience and TEACH him what’s expected. There’s no reason you can’t end up with a nice driving pony!
Guess we have different perspectives WA. When Maggie spins in the cart it scares the daylights out of me. And if she gets frustrated and goes up… well it doesn’t phase me at all in my 4-wheeled Batmobile. My carriage is VERY stable and I can easily put things right quickly.
Maggie can be one hot little tamale at times. The first time she panicked in a hazard even Bill hopped off the back But I know my little girl and I knew she’d stay between the shafts. She doesn’t bolt or run and so it’s just a matter of a reassuring word and then sorting things out. Hot ponies don’t equate to stupid 
The OP said that this pony has already taught someone else to drive so my assumption would be that he is not the hot number he once was. I think by ground driving him around outside the ring she will soon know what to expect. And if he does accept it nicely then I’d definitely go with a 4-wheeled vehicle. JMO - and admittedly I’m not the most experienced driver, but I’m a very experienced horsewoman and think I have a pretty good understanding of them. I expect I’ve done more different things with more different equines than the average bear :winkgrin:
Oh come now, its fun being in the viceroy when a pony decides to try exit stage left :lol: But if the pony has only been a road pony all it knows is light little jog cart, it has never worn breeching, and it has three speeds- trot fast, faster and fastest. If you ever want to go somewhere make a shushing or hissing noise like a fire extinguisher at your pony and I’m sure you will see a speed of trot you didnot know exhisted! (and that also stands as a caveat, never shush at a show horse like you shush a baby, that kind of noise gets them excited) It may never have even been trained to walk in harness, road ponies don’t have to walk. If the pony is coming with a cart and harness use the equipment he knows until you guys get to know each other. 20 years old is not old at all for a Hackney Pony. There are many Hackneys still showin at the highest level who are 20 years of age or better. The pony in these ads, Vindicator, http://www.benttreefarm.net/Adverts.htm is 22 this year and came out of retirement to win a World’s Championship this year. A lot of older Hackney Road Ponies do successfully switch to the pleasure pony division when they can’t go fast enough to be a competiive road pony any more. For Hackney Pleasure ponies at the breed shows you use the same kind of harness, with no breeching, as you do with the roadponies, but a different cart, a 2 wheeled pleasure cart, usually a Jerald, and wooden wheels are popular to use on these pleasure carts.
I’ve been kind of ass-uming that BYDM’s pony has never been anything BUT a roadster pony - BYDM, please correct me if that’s not right. If that’s the case, pony may very well be like my sweet little 'Mander Man was… Absolutely rock-solid in the ring, soft and rateable, 3 great trots, excellent “whoa”, and very capable of teaching someone to drive… roadster ponies. 
But the first time I tried to line him from the arena back to the barn he was nearly in tears of terror, looking for his header. Blowy-snorty, wiggle left, wiggle right, spin, run back to Human, “OMG!! Where’s my HEADER?? I need my HEADER, I can’t dooooooooo this all by myself!! Somebody needs to put a hand on my rein to tell me where to gooooo! OMG, OMG, it’s a TRASH CAN! Aaaaaggggghhhhh!” :lol:
By the time he left us a few months later he was actually quite proud of his newly acquired outdoorsman skills. :lol: “Look at ME! I can walk way down the driveway and back All By Myself!! Aren’t I COOL?”
He was a trip. :winkgrin:
It’s not that getting an ex-roadster outside is not do-able, it usually IS do-able. It just takes time, patience, confidence, good reflexes, good training, and an absolute determination that you ARE gonna be Boss Mare.
Renae has a great idea there of putting him in the Pleasure division. That way, you could get a wooden-wheeled Jerald, and that would be a lot safer to experiment with in the great outdoors than the jog cart would! :yes:
Along with the very good advice given, I would add that any shaft shortening, should be done from the back of the vehicle, or totally replaced with a smaller size. Shafts are shaped and curved to fit around the equine body. Just making them shorter by cutting the fronts off, removes more than just length. They go from graceful, fitted, to blunt stubs in front of vehicle. Lost the shaft’s spring, bend, that are part of vehicle design for ride of passengers, horse. Too short a shaft can be as bad or worse of a problem, as too long.
Vehicles for minis are overall, smaller sized, in proportion to the little animals. My friend has a couple at about 34", which are her biggest, mini animals. There is no way they would fit a shetland-sized pony cart. Just too big overall. Like a little kid, 4 yrs, trying to wear his 8yr old brother’s clothes. Not enough little kid to fill them out.
The cart that fits the 34" minis, is too big for her 30" minis. Sounds odd, but such a small animal doesn’t fit well at all. Shafts go down hill, too wide, animal out too far from the seat on too-long of shafts.
Fit does count, needs to be considered hard, when purchasing a vehicle for an animal. Especially fitting with smaller animals, when balance in 2-wheelers during work can be strongly affected . Seldom does just shortening the shafts, fix all the problems of fitting vehicle to an animal.
Absolutely! We had adjustments made on the shafts of both of our wooden road carts: Phoenix gained weight and needed a bit more room; Maggie’s cart was second hand and needed to be sized to her. Bill Long adjusted them - widening the horse cart shafts and shortening the pony cart ones. And he was very clear that it had to be done from the back.
OK… am I the only one who has realized that a thread with this subject line wouldn’t fly on any other forum??? :eek: :o :lol:
[QUOTE=Ashemont;2802214]
OK… am I the only one who has realized that a thread with this subject line wouldn’t fly on any other forum??? :eek: :o :lol:[/QUOTE]
Yes
.
Wowser, I came all the way over here on recommendation of some other moke’s wink wink, nod nod to participate in the thread on shaft size (wink wink, nod nod), qualified as I am to discuss. I am, however, highly embarrassed to find myself caught with my pants down, so to speak, realizing that the subject is not what I had hoped it would be. :eek:
So, I’ll just be moving on, now, don’t pay any attention to me. Good luck with your mini shafts. :o
:lol:
Stop it Pat!! No I NEVER thought of Title that way until you pointed it out. After rereading the posts with the WINK WINK thinking, my face just hurts!! Grinning that hard is not recommended, might go on into muscle spasms.
Never thought of us as the XXXX Driving Group. Too bad for AnotherRound, wasted a visit here, though I enjoyed their funny post!
You girls are making me :o. And for us pair drivers, what about those inevitable discussions about pole length…:D:winkgrin::o
There’s a group of us from my barn that go out for lunch every week together. We’ve been doing this for many years and naturally the discussion is always about horses and no topic is off limits, whether it’s worms, or cleaning a nasty wound, or preg-checking a mare…you know, all the usual stuff. Sometimes we’ll notice fellow restaurant patrons with looks of horror on their faces and realize that maybe we should tone it down a bit…
[QUOTE=Ashemont;2802214]
OK… am I the only one who has realized that a thread with this subject line wouldn’t fly on any other forum??? :eek: :o :lol:[/QUOTE] There’s always one! :winkgrin:
I must confess to thinking it was very like a few email titles that were caught in my “junk spam”
Good Lord! My original post has certainly been taken in a different direction:o
Can’t say enough thanks for all the advice (and laughs)! I had no idea of my xxx rated title, till someone mentioned it:eek:
War Admiral- you are right (again). This pony has ONLY been used as a show road pony. Although he has taught previous owners to drive-they were learning to drive with the intent of showing road ponies. I’m told he has never been hooked outside of the ring or in anything but show harness and jog cart. He had never even been turned out for play other than the few months before previous owners purchase and now these last two months. Knowing that, I would only purchase the same kind of harness and jogcart that he is used to, espcially since a pleasure (breeching)harness and cart for him wouldn’t fit my mini’s if the Hackney decided pleasure wasn’t his cup of tea.
I’m not the 100mph type, but my friend (who is paralyed, which was the original purpose for getting a driving pony is). She would LOVE to show in road pony!! I doubt they would let her, and our hearts couldn’t take it. When we’ve worked with her with friends safe pleasure ponies, we keep a lead rope on for safety.
I’m not gonna say I’ve been completely scared away from the Hackney. I’m still gonna try him out (I’ll keep you posted-if I survive:lol:) But since we need him to be very safe even if only in the ring, I’m going to be very cautious about taking him. He still has ALOT of life and energy left and may be better suited for someone looking to get into showing road ponies.
I’m still going to pursue training my mini’s for the pleasure driving. Can someone suggest a 4 wheeled cart for the mini’s?
Re: shafts (here I go again:o). Someone mentioned instead of shortening them, “completely changing them”. Can that be done, can you replace shafts that are too big (go ahead, have a good time with that-just give me the answer in between your laughing:lol:)
[QUOTE=BackyardDressa. She would LOVE to show in road pony!! I doubt they would let her, and our hearts couldn’t take it. When we’ve worked with her with friends safe pleasure ponies, we keep a lead rope on for safety.
Is your friend a wheelchair user? Is her intent to take her wheelchair onto the carriage or is she able to mount and be seated in a “normal” seat and leave the wheelchair behind?
You can get carriages made for those with disability and here’s one of my own make. I’ve shown a few views so you can see some of its features: Obviously a drop rear and ramps and though on the photo it shows a chair being man-handled (pushed) up, it also has a winch with a fail safe clip, fast release to sudden pressure, to help to get the chair onto it. You’ll see in the photo where I’m driving it (from the wrong side) that the steps for mounting conventionally are VERY low and much larger than normal and the carriage entrance is wider than the norm, the whip holder is more easily accessible (low and in the middle), non slip rubber everywhere, beefed up springing and flooring, easy to maintain wheel hubs etc and lots of other features. Now you can buy such vehicles from most of the large reputable manufacturers, though personally I’d advise you to go to a carriage builder and ensure that you can get one adapted to your particular needs.
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/flodden_edge/open%20day/DSCF0046.jpg)
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/flodden_edge/open%20day/DSCF0051.jpg)
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/flodden_edge/open%20day/DSCF0040.jpg)
I think though that whatever, the fundamental thing you will HAVE to have is a driving pony with years under his belt and that is absolutely rock-steady and totally comfortable with the new and unusual.
If you’ve already been driving with your friend, then you will have come to appreciate that with someone with profound disability that there’s no hurrying and rushing to get mounted quickly and its at the point of mounting and dismounting that there’s risk. So you need a rock steady horse whilst this is occurring and a lot of assistance to get the person on the vehicle and as you can see in my photos.
Then dependent on the nature of the disability, reaction times and response may well be a little slower and with less dexterity that is the “norm” and so a forgiving older pony that has been there and done that and knows that if its being asked to do something silly (unintentionally) that it will err on the side of thinking “nah, you don’t REALLY mean me to do that” and will err to being safe and certain rather than quick and highly responsive.
Personally speaking I’d suggest something like an older more than 10 and with a minimum of 7 rock solid (wide and varied) driving years experience for such circumstances. One I’ve just bought recently for a customer with disability is an 18 year old welsh section C. He’s totally fit and active and has been shown, done hdt at national level and has thousands of miles of pleasure driving under his belt. He was owned by a lady I originally taught to drive 30 years ago and who unfortunately developed Multiple Sclerosis and over the years became more disabled and sadly ultimately to such an extent that she felt that to do the pony justice, it was best to sell him if the right home could be found. This coincided with me searching for such a pony for my other customer.
This pony is forward and has a lot about him with a very confident and assertive driver but with a nervous novice or someone with disability he errs on the side of being so laid back he’s likely to stop and stand still if he thinks the person is uncertain about what they want. I’d judge he will have a good 7 years and more driving to give and to help his new owner start out with pleasure driving and a few local level showing classes.
I’d suggest from what you describe that you consider carefully the sort of pony that would suit BEFORE you go looking.
Consider if the wheelchair is going on board its all extra weight too.
I’d be thinking something like a welsh B or C or a highland or hafflinger pony or crosses of those types.
I’m not gonna say I’ve been completely scared away from the Hackney. I’m still gonna try him out (I’ll keep you posted-if I survive:lol:)
You are clearly MUCH braver or MUCH more experienced than I am. :yes: :no:
I personally would NEVER try out, by driving, a pony that I was scared of or uncertain about what it had done.
I am though being facetious.:yes:
Get the owner to drive the pony and you watch and see what it can do and how it behaves when its harnessed and put to and how its driven and handled and how it responds. And you judge from the ground if that suits your requirements and is what you want. Then, and only if you are impressed by what you have seen so far, you might want to first try it by long reining in the first instance - and in safe confines. And that is what I always do with green or novice or young ones. Though I might pass this step if I’ve observed the owner and its absolutely apparent that the horse and the driver is proficient. Only then though do I mount a carriage and sit next to the owner to watch them drive and THEN I move over to the driving seat and take the reins to see what the horse can really and truly do.
I’m still going to pursue training my mini’s for the pleasure driving. Can someone suggest a 4 wheeled cart for the mini’s?
do you drive them singles or pairs? If singles then consider this, a 4 wheeled vehicle is harder for a pony to work with - more drag. So why a 4-wheeler? What sort of driving do you intend to do? What size is this “mini”? What weight are you? Will there be a passenger or a back stepper?
Re: shafts (here I go again:o). Someone mentioned instead of shortening them, “completely changing them”. Can that be done, can you replace shafts that are too big (go ahead, have a good time with that-just give me the answer in between your laughing:lol:)
Well most of the emails I get talk about making them bigger not smaller :winkgrin::lol:
Seriously 2 ways you can alter the shafts. You either take them totally away and just put new ones that are the right size there instead. Usually they’re fitted onto the carriage with some sort of clamp and bolting arrangement and you remove them from there.
The other way is that often the fixing arrangement is such that you can slide the shafts further back under the vehicle and that is how you get the adjustment you want for different horses. I never made a carriage unless it has facility to adjust the shafts forward and back and also to bring them so they can narrow or widen - that is usually done by turning round fixing clamps and perhaps putting in spacers.
Photo of the carriage you’re talking about and particularly showing the fixings will help to elicit more specific advice about how to do the ones you’re talking about.
