One Week Behind the Plow: A Greenhorn Goes to Draft-horse School

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I'm surprised that steering two full-grown Belgians, each of which weighs nearly a ton, is such a delicate operation, demanding constant concentration. It's something akin to playing a 20-pound trout on four-pound-test line, but with a pole in each hand and a fish on each hook. Rod says it will take a while for us to develop a feel for it, and—in my case, at least—I'm sure that's true.

I can't say I'm encouraged by the way today's class ended.
We had progressed from taking turns steering the team around the corral to learning how to hitch the horses to a wagon. This involved, first of all, driving the team up to the wagon's tongue, at a nearly perpendicular angle, and then turning Sharon and Cora sharply at just the right moment so that they'd end up side by side in front of the wagon, with the tongue between them, ready to be hitched.

Rod emphasized that the steps involved in hitching a team, like those in harnessing a horse, should be perfomed in a specific order. If they're not, you risk ending up under a horse's hooves or the implement you're hitching to.

Rod demonstrated the routine: Slip the neck yoke onto the wagon tongue, and clip the yoke rings to the horses' breast straps. Next, moving behind the team, connect one horse's trace chains—the inner one first and then the outer one—to the wagon's doubletree, and then attach the other horse's trace chains in the same manner. To unhitch the team, he said, you simply reverse the steps.

"And now, kiddies," said Rod challengingly, "we'll see how much you've learned today. I want each of you to come up here, unhitch the team from the wagon, drive Sharon and Cora around the corral and back up to the wagon, and hitch them again."

I was not eager to do this (heck, I was still having trouble driving the horses in a straight line!). So I hung back, doing my best to appear inconspicuous, content to watch my fellow students take the test. One by one, Buck, Vicki, Art, Frank, Doug, and Wendy each went through the procedure, not always perfectly but nearly so, while the rest of us watched, silently rooting for our colleague to get it right.

Then Rod turned to me, cocked an eyebrow, and said, "You're next, Terry; you can't put it off any longer."

Something inside me snapped. My pulse raced. My mind went blank. I became the Woody Allen of draft-horsedom.

First, I tried to disconnect the yoke rings before unhooking the trace chains, instead of the other way around. I dropped the wagon tongue, barely missing my toe. I forgot to take in the slack on the lines before I said "giddup," and Sharon and Cora started off in different directions. I wove around the corral. I mistimed the turn into the wagon tongue and ended up with Sharon and Cora both to the left of the tongue and nearly facing one another.

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