[drivingpairs] pulling from the pole - unever road surface

Thinking about the poster who had the problem ONLY come up on a road with 
uneven surface, meaning a road which is higher in the middle and goes down on 
the 
sides. Due to my foreign origin I am not sure how to call it, I'm sure there 
must be a proper term for such a road, having a high crown?  Anyhow, yes, that 
can happen and can be explained easily, and actually was the reason that in 
the old days one would hitch the bigger horse on the lower side. Two reasons 
for that: First the obvious: Since the road is lower on the shoulder, when you 
have the bigger horse there, they both appear to be the same height, but 
second, and more importantly than just the looks was, that the horse on the 
lower 
side needs to pull harder, and the assupmtion was that the bigger animal would 
also hopefully be the stronger one (which of course we know might not be so at 
all).  Why does he have to pull harder? Any vehicle will have the tendency to 
wanting to roll downhill, so if left alone, or just being pushed from behind, 
the vehicle would turn towards the downhill and roll off the crown and into 
the ditch. So we constantly need to compensate in two ways for this: First the 
better way: The horse on the lower side should pull harder, that makes the 
vehicle want to come up and stay on the crown. Or, if he doesn't pull harder, 
or 
you don't make him pull harder, then of course the only way to prevent the 
vehicle from going off into the ditch, is that the horse near the crown of the 
road needs to constantly pull the pole over to his side to keep it up on the 
road. So that's probably what the poster experienced. The horse near the crown, 
the nearside or left horse (in our country were we drive on the right) started 
to lean away from the pole as he constantly needed to keep the vehicle up to 
the crown. One could probably have corrected that by pushing the off side horse 
more forward. But if one didn't, then the near side horse might have gotten a 
bit too eager in pulling his pole over, so that perhaps the off side horse now 
even started to pull against it, and voila, one had a pulling match with both 
now pulling off the pole. That's normal: The more one pulls to one side, the 
more the other will pull to the other side. Always force creates counter 
force. Same with the horses, when pulling away from the pole, as well as when 
leaning into each other (Beverly's case). The more the one leans, the more the 
other does too, they lean on each other, neither one wanting to give in, and if 
he 
would, his partner would fall over. Same when horses pull in our hand. The 
more we try to hold them, the more they pull. We can only break that by giving 
our hand.
So back to the pair pulling away from the pole on the road with a high crown. 
First, same as described before, make them go straight on a flat surface, and 
if you are fine there, great. Then when you come to a road with a high crown, 
try to drive on the middle of the crown, rather than on the right side. But 
if you need to drive on the right side, make the right horse do more work, 
especially if you see that the left one starts handing off the pole. Make the 
right one do so much work, that both pole straps have some slight slack, then 
you 
should be ok.
Good luck
Hardy 


_________________________________________________________
To Unsubscribe, change to Digest or Vacation mode go to: 
http://www.drivingpairs.com/dpmem.shtml
`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Other related posts: