This question is something I have been pondering over. Personally, I have never owned drafts although I have owned several other horses including riding horses and buggy horses and have hitched and driven my neighbors team of Percherons numerous times. At the present I own no horses as I and my family are stationed in Togo, West Africa as missionaries in a little rural bush village. My mother sent a package to us in the mail and included a few Rural Heritage magazines as well as a Father's Day gift of Uncle Joe's books "America's Rural Yesterday" volume 1 & 2. Very interesting! Also extremely interesting to show to these African farmers how our ancestors farmed! In our region, animals are not used. All soil turning, hoeing, planting, and harvesting is done strictly by hand. (The farming methods used here could be another subject all on its own.) Anyways, as I have been reading and perusing the magazines and books, I see that almost all draft horses have blinders, but not all. In J. C. Allen's photos, you will find in the same hitch where some horses have blinders and some don't. In the recent Aug./Sept. issue of R.H. on page 33, a four horse hitch is completely blinder-less. Mr. Leo de Visser (page 34) also uses no blinders. Is this personal preference of the teamster? A sign of a well trained horse? An accident waiting to happen? Some questions I've had.
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Dusty 4R says 2017-06-21 20:43:26 (CST)
I think personal preference of the teamster. I don't use blinders and get along fine. In fact I don't recommend using them at all, either on drafts or saddle horses and we drive both. We raise most of our horses but bought one gelding 5 yrs ago that prefers blinders so he gets them. And I am sure it's because he was trained that way. I'm surprised there aren't more responses here..?
6 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
Scott S says 2017-06-21 22:32:22 (CST)
We had a good discussion on this not that long ago if you do a search. I use blinders when pulling most things. My belief is that blinders are for forward movement. Most of the time when driving a team if they spook backwards it is a bad idea, tears up harness, wagons ect, generally dangerous. . Equine in general won't spook as easily in a direction they can't see. If a team has not been trained without blinders it will be a new experience and being able to see something being pulled behind them could cause an exciting ride.
6 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
Keith L. says 2017-06-22 15:26:23 (CST)
Folks, I have no idea what happened. This is the exact word for word post I posted a year or two ago. Not sure how it was resurrected from the archives and re-posted or who did it. A technological glitch? I haven't had a chance to be on this site lately very much so there is no chance my computer somehow remembered it and was hacked into and re-posted. I just logged in this evening and saw my old question and was rather surprised to see it posted with someone else's name attached. And yes, we had a good discussion. Klaus enlightened us a bit as well, if I remember right.
Keith L.
6 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
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