20 July 2010

Euro style driving collar, some observations

If you have a carriage with high draught, as many USA vehicles do, then the Eurocollar follows the same line of draught as a breast collar. There is not enough rigidity in the shoulder area, where the stiff forewale of a neck collar would be, for the Eurocollar to transfer much weight pushing ability onto the shoulder blade of the pony. With anything that has a lower line of draught - eg, a similar cart adapted for axle draught - then you will be stressing the junction between the shoulder area and the chest area of the collar, and the position of the trace attachment would need to be much higher. Lacking rigidity along the shoulder blade, it doesn't in any way match up to a good neck collar and doesn't have the ability to change draught angle as most hinged hame tugs do. It doesn't really offer much advantage over a breast collar, either, except perhaps a slightly higher point of draught.

Having said all this as a general discussion of the collar design, OTOH I have a friend who drove her Fell pony in one of these collars for several years (see photo in my Sue Millard folder), mainly for its adjustability. Her cart has a high draughtline and he did appear to go better in the "French" collar than in his breast collar. She complained though that the French collar changed his musculature and after he'd spent a season working in it none of his neck collars fitted. However in my opinion they had not fitted well before that, as he'd always spent a lot of time tossing his head down to his knees, so no doubt the French collar was a relief in his case. I bought one of his neck collars after his death, but I sold it on because the hames were wrongly designed for the draught of my carriage (hame pull positioned too low). I only used it once because the hame pull was about 1.5" too low for my carriages and I could see the collar wasn't working correctly.

The best hames I've got are the old solid steel ones, and god only knows how old they are, maybe up to 100 years. With new leatherwork and buckles, and the metalwork scrubbed and painted gold, they are the right shape and draw correctly.

Those modern hames in "alloy bronze" (that's how they were described) looked nice but didn't work for us. For the amount of show ring work I do, it wasn't worth looking for yet another set of "brass" type hames for the patent collar - and anyway it didn't match my plain leather harness - so I sold it complete and am content with what we have.

His other collar had a swept back top that seemed to annoy any horse it was put on, so I didn't even consider buying that.

The change of neck shape was also observed when my daughter drove big horses commercially, to heavy, relatively low-draught 4 wheeled carriages, in cheap versions of the French/brollar/Euro collar. There was a build up of muscle over the wither which she swore was defensive, ie, resistance against some kind of unpleasant pressure or pain in the design - possibly the collar shortening as weight came on the tug buckles, causing downward pressure on the top of the collar. It certainly changed these horses' saddle fitting when on occasion they were swopped out into the ridden trekking string.