Driving Lesson

Sometimes life throws quirky coincidences in our paths.
Yesterday evening, after I blipped a pair of Clydesdale horses, I went to the local with my daughter for a little celebration, to 'wet the baby's head.

The head concerned was little Charlie, now 2 weeks old, he is very cute and coped really well with the evening.

Whilst at the pub I met a guy, who I didn't know but it transpired he works with the horses. He invited us to go and have an introduction to driving heavy horses this morning.

The blip is of my daughter 'long reining' 4 year old Clansman. Whilst not my favourite image of the horses, this kind of sums up the power of this huge horse.
Kate is 6ft tall yet Clansman still towered over her. I had a go too, but no pics taken of me.

I could go on at length, but in a nutshell:
The chap who owns these horses is a total enthusiast.
His heavy horses do attend a number of shows during the summer, but they are essentially working animals. They are trained to work hauling logs and extracting timber from woodland that is not suitable for large vehicles, tractors etc.

Although we have always had ponies and horses, we have not had anything to do with these huge creatures. Clansman is a four year old gelding, who is just being broken to harness. He will not do any hauling until he is 6 or 7 years old, when he will have finished growing.

Long reining - as shown here, is getting him used to wearing the clanking harness and responding to a combination of verbal commands as well as via the reins.
You have to keep talking to horses to give them confidence, because they wear blinkers and cannot see you behind them.
Starting with the name and then the command. 'Walk on' 'Hup' for right turn. 'Hi' for left. 'Woah' for stop.

He was quite nervous to start with, but settled well.
It was fantastic.