Putting to

 I know I have done a few attempt posts about putting a horse or pony to a cart and what is involved, but this time I have pictures to help the words make sense. With the help of a friend of mine at the barn and her pony starting in harness- here goes. 

When putting a horse or pony to a cart or carriage it is always good to have two things. One is a header to stand in front of the horse and help keep them quiet and two is a routine. The days of fhe old west in the movies, when the actor runs outside, unties the horse,  jumps on the carriage, flaps the reins while yelling HAAAA! and tearing away are bullshit. If the horse is wearing a bridle of any kind its not a good idea to use the bridle to tie them and if the horse is put to a cart or carriage, they are to be wearing a bridle and not tied. Any time you're working around an animal that outweighs and out muscles us like our horses and ponies do- everything should be about Safety first! Our own safety and that of the horse as well will help things go smoothly. 

When I was training Kat I didn't often have a header and I taught him that when the bridle went on and I put you 'here' you are not to move until I am on the cart and have asked you to go. When we finished and we get back to our 'here' spot again, he was to stay put and don't move until everything was undone, I removed the cart shafts from the tugs and asked him to come forward. This is probably the first part of our routine- establish a 'Here' spot. This should be somewhere the horse is comfortable standing, where the cart is easily accessible and you have plenty of room to walk around both sides to fasten and unfasten everything. For the first several times putting them to and taking them away from the cart, I do it in the arena usually somewhere in the middle of the end by the gate. I have brought the cart out to where we will be hitching and unhitching and thus established our 'Here' spot. When you get to the point of competing, you're hauling to new places and sometimes showing out of your trailer so your 'Here' spot may be close to the trailer, but you will still establish a place where all of your hitching and unhitching happens.  

So now that the harness is on, bridle and reins are on, cart is in the arena waiting and everything is ready, what happens next? Well there are 8 points you have to do and the first 2 are the shafts going into the tugs. This is the first part of putting to. Bring the horse around to stand in front of the cart to where you can bring the cart forward to the horse and slide the shafts into the tugs. 1) left side and 2) right side. You may have to slide in one side and then walk around to the other side to check that they are both in the tugs. With ponies and minis you can look over their back- horses not so much. 

Here you can see the shaft is thru the tugs on the harness saddle.  There should be a tug stop which will help keep the cart from sliding too far forward hitting your horse in the butt. The tug stop does Not go thru the tugs.  This was a mistake I made early on and was corrected at our first Darby. 

Next you will attach the traces to the singletree. 3) right side since you're already over there and 4) left side. There are a few varieties of trace ends and singletree attachments. This cart has what is called a sword end meaning it is flat with 2 holes in the end. The trace slips on and there is either a leather strap or a wire that drops down thru both holes- one on either side of the trace to keep them from sliding off the end. I found some handy pins with rings that I attached to the inside hole with a small cable. The pin drops into the outside hole and the ring flips down to hold the trace on. The cable keeps the rings attached to the cart so they don't get lost. Since everything is still in the beginning stages, the traces are a tad short so I made extensions for now. 

Traces attached to singletree. A good rule of thumb is that there should be about 18" between the horses butt and the front of the cart. This gives their back legs room to move at the different gaits without cart interference. The traces can usually be adjusted accordingly.  Step 2- slide the nearest trace on and fasten it to the singletree on the cart. For mine it is slide the trace on, push the pin down and flip the loop down.  Then go around and do the other side the same way- 3) left side and 4) right side.

Step 3 is attaching the holdback straps and breeching.  Some people attach snaps to their holdbacks and leave them on the cart. If your harness is synthetic and your cart is kept indoors, this is a good way to be able to just snap them on and off quickly which saves time. My harness is leather and my carts stay outdoors so that's not going to work for me. 

You can see the breeching strap comes forward from underneath and goes thru the ring on the underside of the shaft. If you run your traces thru the gap between the shaft and the hold back straps, it's a good way to keep them up out of the horses way.  Now that the hold back is thru the loop on the outside, the strap goes over the shaft towards the front inside by the horse. Depending on the length of your straps you can wrap them once or twice. When you have it tight enough, now run the end back towards the buckle, going under the wraps on the shaft and over the traces. Buckle accordingly and tuck the ends in the keepers. Do one side and then the other- 5) left side and 6) right side.  On a two wheel cart- this is your brakes. This helps stop the cart without letting it run up the back of your horses legs or ass. This also helps hold the cart back off the horse when going down hills. 

Last in the process is to adjust the straps that hold the shafts down and don't allow the shafts to flip up and dump you out the back. 

As shown in the above pic, this strap goes over the shafts and then down the side of the saddle, thru part of the buckle on the girth and then buckles to the undergirth. With the traces running under this strap, it keeps everything neatly held down instead of flopping around and loose- begging for something to get caught up in it. 7) right side and 8) left side. Now your horse is put to the cart and you're ready to drive. 

Take your reins down and climb into the cart. When it comes to unhitching it is the same routine just in reverse. It doesn't matter which side you start with, but the last ones buckled are the first ones unbuckled, left side , right side. Breeching- undo one side then the other. Then undo the traces, one side then the other, then pull the cart back taking the shafts out of the tugs... Sometimes it just seems easier that if I'm on one side to just do all of the buckles on that side then go over to the other but when you think about it- if something were to spook your horse and only one side of things was fastened in place, how much more dangerous would that be?

There are a few issues with this set up but I will discuss that in another post.