[drivingpairs] Pairs--Teams--Multiples--Reins

I'm glad that Jay (and Larry) set this straight already. Dear friends, it all 
depends where you are coming from!

With carriage horses two horses next to each other are a Pair, and four 
horses are a Team (or a Four-in-Hand). But with draft horses two horses are a 
Team and four horses are a 4-up! So it all depends were you are coming from 
and to call two horses a team is not wrong, only it's draft horse language, 
that's all. So to be precise, to call two carriage horses a team, yes that's 
wrong, they are a Pair, but to call two draft horses a team is absolutely 
correct. And Ken is a draft horse man, and since we were talking reins, hey, 
they are used by both Worlds, so naturally Ken was talking Draft Horses and 
thus was quite correct in his language.

Further on the reins, Kathy, read Ken's post again carefully: What Ken wrote 
was that the outside rein is the longer one, and the coupling rein the 
shorter one, and indeed he is right, the outside rein is the long piece of 
leather, the coupling rein is the short piece of leather which is buckled 
onto the long draft rein. That's what he meant.

And what you meant, was that however, the short coupling rein is buckled to 
the long draft rein in a way, that when laying things out, indeed the total 
distance from your hand to the front is longer on the coupling rein (and must 
be so, as that has to cross over to the other horse, so has to have a longer 
distance), nevertheless, the actual piece of leather is shorter there. :-)

And when you went on to talking about having the horses on the inside or 
outside of the reins, that had nothing to do with the above. That's 
applicaple only to leader reins, where indeed carriage drivers with a 
"four-in-hand" = driving with all four reins in ONE hand (Achenbach style) 
have the leader reins running around the outside of the wheeler heads (having 
the Roger rings on the outside), as that way in a turn when taking a loop 
with the inside leader rein,  the outside leader rein running the long 
distance around the wheelers head will shorten itself automatically by that 
long arch around the outside, thus we get our leaders automatically out of 
draft which we need as otherwise the leaders would pull the pole over. 

Drafthorse people however in often much longer multiple hitches and driving 
two handed often prefer to run the leader reins on the inside of the wheeler 
(and / or swing team) heads, so that they have less chance of having the 
leader reins get caught and hung up on any outside object. At least that's 
what I have been told. But perhaps Ken can jump in and explain to us, why 
draft people prefer to run the leader reins on the insides when they do that.

So friends, let's be careful before we call somebody "wrong", when he is just 
coming from a different World. The Brits don't drive on the "wrong" side of 
the road either, they just drive on the left where we drive on the right. 
That's all. :-)

I admit that it can be confusing at times, but that's not because they are 
wrong, that's just because we may not understand their way and / or may not 
be open minded enough to see it from their perspective. Let's be open minded, 
we can only learn from other views too.  
Hardy 


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