When training green horses, what is an appropriate weight to drag? My mare is small, Percheron x Welsh, just under 15H, but stout, probably 83" heart girth. We are working at dragging tires, I'm trying to get her to walk quietly and avoid breaking into a trot. We are dragging two full sized automobile tires mounted on their rims, enough weight that she has to lean forward and walk a little faster when we come to a small upward incline in the pasture. My neighbor has offered me some giant tires from large construction equipment, or I could keep adding weight to what I've got. But if the point is to teach her to walk calmly when we are working, will we make faster progress if she is pulling heavier weight? Do I want to load her up to the point that trotting becomes difficult? How will that carry over to our regular work with a cart? Thanks

You don't necessarily have to add weight to slow her down, you need to train her to slow down through consistent workouts. We use a good size truck tire for singles and a larger loader tire for teams.

I am definitly not a fan of dragging a load that CAN'T be varied when starting a horse. A load on a wagon with brakes works much better. We used a big cart for the first hitches on the Klamath marsh and we could lock up the wheels when we wanted. I used a wagon with brakes at home to start them.
Once started (able to stop them and turn them somewhat) a light load and many miles will work as good or better than a big load that they have to work at. If you had a huge log, you could roll it around to teach easeing into a load and stopping the horse before it couldn't pull it to teach how to pull.

I sure like my road grader for starting teams as can change the load.

I use enough weight that they cant run with to far ,I have a team of pulling horses that I drag 2 tractor tires with a total of 14 cement blocks in them for 6 miles a day just to keep them in shape they where not broke when I started

John Bock-----where did you get your Perch/Welsh cross?

For Kate: from a city carriage outfit north of Dallas that was transitioning from haflingers to percherons, there was one F1 generation by a short percheron stallion out of haflinger and welsh mares, eventually he sold his smaller horses and was using only percherons, driving singles instead of teams.

Just curious…..where are doing all this dragging? In a field (and how big) or a road or ???? I figure 6 miles is about 2 hours or so. It sounds about like what I've been doing with mine, only with a stone boat, but not a consistent time or distance. Just trying to keep working and fit between actual projects.

in my pasture, and down the dirt road