5 April 2005

What's THIS?

I do not have personal experience of using a French/Austrian collar (I dislike the term "brollar" even more than "brunch", as to me it sounds like "brolly", the English nickname for an umbrella) - HOWEVER a friend has been using one almost exclusively for a couple of years on her ageing Fell pony and I have observed a few things. One is that his neck has changed shape!! His neck collars no longer fit him because he has put so much muscle on the top of his neck and shoulders. This is not due to fat or maturity - he was 19 when the collar was bought and he hasn't put weight on. I have observed also that he moves more freely in the French collar - he extends more willingly than he did in breast collar or neck collar.

Now I am not saying that there isn't a potential heat problem with the large area of horse that this collar covers. For this pony in the British climate it isn't a terrifically big issue as he isn't asked to work hard and fast.

Also, to my eye it doesn't pull from the required point of least motion in the shoulderblade either. It is really no more than a breast collar with a stiffened neck strap - an improvement but not really a huge one. My daughter has had experience of using them with commercial carraiges and I will ask her for more info on how they stood up to work - I have a vague memory of rubs on the horses and tears in the collars from bad handling but can't be specific. (More when I find out. The more we know, the better the judgements we can make on the euqipment for our horses.)

Neither am I saying that this Fell pony's evidence makes the French collar a better piece of equipment than a neck collar, because (looking at the whole once more) I am aware that the patent faced neck collar my friend used, apparently sturdy and delightful-looking though it was, was a "bent" or "swept back" show collar, not a working straight-profiled collar, and it just plain annoyed that pony - and mine, come to think of it! I borrowed it on 2 occasions and both times, my ponies - two different ones - spent a lot of time stretching their heads down to their knees as though to ease something at the withers. Her pony did this a lot too and she always put it down to him having an itchy nose that he wanted to scratch on his knees. Until I borrowed that collar, I believed her! I didn't like it and I don't think the ponies did either, so it would not be hard for the French collar to have been an improvement on THAT collar for this pony.

Its adjustable quality is one of its main attractions - and I think that the pony I'm talking about has needed that adjustability during his change of shape. Compared to having several neck collars, it is cheap to buy just the one. (I have six neck collars, and I only have 2 ponies). The French collar is a numb thing to put on the horse though - surprisingly heavy, and more clumsy than a collar with hames and tugs.

As a separate observation, is there ANYTHING more numb to handle than a pair of hames that are off the collar but still joined by the bottom hame strap??? I swear at mine regularly when cleaning for shows and lways have to take them apart completely for the sake of sanity :0)

5 April 2005

Well, I called daughter and we've had a good discussion on the French collars. She said "I don't like them!" very emphatically.

She said her big horses worked better in a breast collar (despite a heavy load, driver and 4 adults in a 4 wheeler carriage) than in a French collar. She has never had the option of neck collars at work, unfortunately. I am not sure who made this collar - some of the following comments may be less of a problem with different makers, but I don't know about that for certain.

Although a breast collar inevitably "narrows" in draught, it does spread the pressure somewhat over the horse's chest (and her Zilco breast collar has up to 1" of padding).

She said that the French collar seemed to suit only the smaller narrower horses, not the big chunky ones. It wraps around the neck and shoulders, and seems to nip - to press on the front/lower end of the shoulder blades. Horses got sweat marks there, though they did not get sores or white marks.

The top/cap is round, not pointed, and there's a possibility of pressure on top of the neck.

The inside is flat, with only half an inch of flat padding compared with the 2" or 3" and the rigidity of a good neck collar and hames, so the trace buckles pull inwards onto the shoulder where on a neck collar they are held out by the hames and the thickness and rigidity of the collar. I think this is possibly the reason that there seems to be pressure on the top of the neck - the oval round the neck is widened and therefore shortened by the trace pull. I'd have to watch one in action during a whole drive to be sure of that, but Jen said they were floppy, not nearly as rigid as neck collar and hames.

She too has observed the muscle thickening of the top of the neck and withers in all the horses that were driven regularly in a F collar - so much so that their saddle pads had to be fastened further back or else they rolled back in use. Riding saddles also needed changing or girthing up further back - and if a horse was at all one sided, the muscling developed in such a way that the saddle rolled to the opposite side. If he was naturally bent left, the saddle rolled to the right.

She said her favourite driving horse hated the French collar. If she was told to use it, she used it only in the morning and changed to the breast collar for the afternoon - like changing your boots for another pair on a long walk. He would rush in the F collar instead of being calm, and would wear his ears back in a grumpy way if made to work in it (nuff said, really!). Her opinion was that the muscling over the neck was a defence against the pressure on the shoulders - that the horses carried themselves differently in self defence.

so, the jury's still out but I hear evidence that makes me think the French collar does not have ALL that much to recommend it - though it was a better choice for my acquaintance's pony than her "showy" bent neck collar.

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