Talk:Horse harness

Cart harness/wagon harness
In the UK this is known as cart harness, even when used in wagons. Is usage different elsewhere?--Richard New Forest 10:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Surcingle/belly band/girth
I've removed the following for the moment:


 * Surcingle A strap that goes around the girth of the horse, with or without a harness saddle.

Is surcingle the correct term? There are two straps in a wheeler harness, which in UK usage are a girth, done up tightly and holding the saddle on, then outside this a belly band, quite loose, to which the shafts or pole attach. Is "surcingle" used for either of these, & if so, which? (The article surcingle only describes other uses, which I think do fit with UK usage). Either way, we need both girth and belly band in the list, to avoid confusion. --Richard New Forest 10:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's add both, then. All I know is that the fine harness folks (the area I know best) I have hung out with call it a girth or a surcingle. There is padding at the top, but not really any type of saddle. I also know that the belly band of a bitting rig is just a suringle. Montanabw (talk) 17:47, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Diagrams
We could do with diagrams of the basic types of harness. Any sources for non-copyright ones?--Richard New Forest 10:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Assorted replies

 * 1) Agreed that a parts of the harness image is needed. For English saddle, I took an existing image on wikimedia commons, one marked as OK for making derivative works, and then cropped it, labeled it on my computer, and re-uploaded it.  Commons has tons of photos of assorted horses in harness, not sure if any will work for this, but if there is a good clear sideways shot of a normal harness, that's what I'd try.
 * 2) Cart harness is not a term I have heard in the western US. Here we pretty much just have show harness (generally suggesting a breastcollar harness) and working harness (usually suggesting harness using a horse collar, though there are show-quality versions).  I suppose the draft horse people, especially those into draft horse showing may have more detailed terminology.  I'm afraid I am not super up on these details, my background is with light horses and horse show stuff.
 * 3) One thing we are up against is that there actually are FOUR "cultures" that use harness: the show horse people, the working draft horse people in western nations, very poor folks in the third world who are still using draft animals for everyday work, and historical uses prior to the replacement of the horse by the automobile.  It will probably be wise to break these down somewhat as the article grows.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Montanabw (talk • contribs) 17:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Just occurred to me that another thing that may need to be worked in, as there is little on the topic either here or in the various cart and wagon articles, is a bit on shafts, singletrees, doubletrees, etc...the equipment that attaches the harnessed horse and the vehicle...or if there are such articles, we need a brief paragraph explaining them and providing links. Montanabw (talk) 18:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * How about "Working harness", which I think would be recognised in the UK as cart harness?. "Working harness (cart harness)"?  I think you'd find that UK people who did your sort of show stuff would also be vague about working harness – though we do have a chap near here (Hampshire) who still farms with heavy horses.  He uses adapted tractor equipment and lots of horses.  I've seen him doing demonstration harrowing with five or six heavy horses abreast, one (rope) rein to the leftmost, one to the rightmost (other bridles each tied to the next) – while riding a coloured cob...


 * I've done brief articles on swingletree and whippletree. What's a doubletree?  (Presumably you don't mean what is currently under Doubletree...).  Is it the same as a whippletree?  Generally I agree that we need to cover these sorts of things.


 * Good recent edits, by the way.--Richard New Forest 21:00, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * For article titles, I would use the most obvious possible terminology and redirects. But maybe for now, let's just expand the sections within Horse harness until they become unwieldy. I like to see at least a good three paragraphs of text before breaking out new articles.  (For example, see Horse, from which TONS of new articles were spun off).   There are differences of opinion, but I personally would rather see a moderately long article with good subheadings than 10,000 stubs (like all those horrid little stubs on harness parts.)


 * As for singletrees and doubletrees, I do believe we have another of those instances where the Brits and Yanks are a people separated by a common language! (grin). Absent photos in the articles here on wiki, we'll work backwards:  Here is what I am talking about:  singletree definition and Pictures of singletrees and doubletrees.  And here is an article that has photos at the end of some draft mules skidding logs with a doubletree on the harness.  You tell me if these are swingletrees and whippletrees. Um yeah, we have the hotel chain, too, though.  Nice spots to stay if you can afford 'em. (grin)  Montanabw (talk) 21:37, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Materials
With a couple of exceptions, until the section on "tugs" and later the "show harness" section, the materials used to construct the different parts of the harness are not discussed. Ileanadu (talk) 04:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Types of Hitches
Shouldn't the article say something about, or have a link to, hitches for various numbers and combinations of horses? A pair hitch, four-in-hand, tandem, three abreast to name a few examples. And show how the hitches are actually set up, the collars, the singletrees, doubletrees, the traces etc. So that if someone wanted to know about harnessing horses to carts and wagons, Wikipedia would tell them.

Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 20:51, 11 July 2011 (UTC)


 * That's a good idea for expansion here or at Driving (horse). Richard New Forest is our driving guru, maybe give him a ping on his talk page about this.   Montanabw (talk) 21:17, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The link to Russian article is wrong
It's about manners of harnessing. Here is the correct link: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B1%D1%80%D1%83%D1%8F 109.67.77.20 (talk) 00:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

History of horse harness
Looks like this part of the article needs expanding – or if there already exists relevant article, it needs to be linked. On other hand, there is very extensive part on history in article Horse collar, what fits here even better, could it be just copied? BirgittaMTh (talk) 09:25, 13 October 2023 (UTC)