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00:26 - The main parking lot, like I said, we have a

00:29 - four of ours hits and perch runs here today.

00:33 - Our names are Rooster, Oliver, Gideon, and Lynn.

00:39 - Lynn is the white horse, he's 22 years old, his partner and crime here is Gideon.

00:45 - He's 21 years old, then up front, my left hand lead horse, his name is Rooster.

00:55 - He's 12 years old and the right hand lead

00:58 - horse, his name Oliver, and he's 19 years old.

01:02 - Three of these, the three older ones were born and raised

01:06 - on my wife's farm out where she lived with her parents.

01:10 - Out in western Pennsylvania, a little town called Summer.

01:13 - Hill, her and her father Wendell Wright raised these guys up.

01:17 - And then two of them, I actually brought home the day I asked

01:21 - my wife to marry me, and I guess I did a good enough job.

01:25 - She stuck around with me for 16 years now.

01:29 - So, like I said, they're born on her farm.

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01:37 - Plus, we wanna talk about here quickly, you're

01:39 - the ones supposed to give me the pointers here.

01:43 - We dock, we dock their tails, that's why they're short because

01:47 - like right now I'm driving these horses, my front two horses.

01:52 - I literally can't touch them, I can't grab them, I can't do nothing, it's all off

01:56 - voice command, and these lines in my hands that go up to the bit in their mouth.

02:00 - So, if they had a long tailbone and it switched, they switched their

02:04 - tail, they could catch that line sucking underneath their tailbone.

02:08 - Walk boys, a little walk, and they take my steering wheel away from me.

02:16 - So, we personally, dock their tail still, they're inside all

02:19 - summer long during the day, out at night for the flies and the sun.

02:24 - Because the black horses, they were born with

02:26 - a little mouse, brown, grey tint to them.

02:29 - They shed that out, they stay black, they'll stay black the rest of their life.

02:34 - The white horse is classified as a grey horse, he was born a jet black.

02:39 - And every year since the first year he was

02:42 - born, he's got greyer and whiteer ever since.

02:47 - He went to a charcoal grey, to a beautiful

02:49 - dappled grey for about eight to ten years he had.

02:54 - And then after that, the big white, or the dapples kept getting bigger and bigger,

02:58 - and now I'm stuck with a white horse to try and keep clean for shows and fairs.

03:02 - They made the easiest project to keep clean.

03:06 - Their beater, a little bit bigger than you normally see.

03:10 - We do that for action and storeability for them trotting around in the show ring.

03:18 - We keep their mains a little bit shorter for life.

03:23 - For normally at a show, we have all decorated up with flowers

03:27 - and ribbons in their hair, but for here we just do all natural.

03:31 - But it keeps their neck, looks, makes their neck look bigger.

03:36 - Our harness is shrunk down from what the

03:40 - knights would have used to go in the battle.

03:45 - The big collar around their neck, that's a scotch collar.

03:49 - And it would have been a lot bigger than that,

03:52 - and the knights hid underneath her behind that.

03:59 - So arrows and drowels didn't hit them. The saddle right behind the collar

04:02 - doesn't look like a saddle you think of nowadays, but we just shrunk it down.

04:07 - The next is a kidney strap that was covered up

04:10 - their kidney, so they didn't get hurt there.

04:14 - And then the bridging or the spiders in the back

04:16 - would have covered up their whole entire butt muscle.

04:20 - So these horses were a lot shorter and stouter

04:24 - back then than what we bred them into now.

04:28 - So we shrunk everything down on the harness, but made the horse a lot bigger.

04:42 - They, after the knights, they went on to like the dignitaries and

04:46 - the royals, because these guys like the trot in a longer distance.

04:50 - Walking isn't their forte, but like I said my horses are getting a little

04:53 - longer than the two, so they like to walk more than they like the trot now.

05:00 - The hitch wagon here, my father and I, we bought the running gear at a sale.

05:04 - We bought the lumber to build it, and my father and I built it about 20 years ago.

05:08 - And then actually just two years ago me and my son, who's

05:12 - out in the arena with my mother, we rebuilt it together.

05:20 - So sentimental value means a lot to me, because it's originally built by me and my dad and me

05:24 - and my son redid it, so it ain't the prettiest in the world, but it works for me and what I do.

05:34 - The harness, we bought that used, I think we only have a couple thousand dollars into that, but right now

05:38 - to go out and buy a new shanahan harness you're talking thousands, five to tens of thousands per cent.

05:45 - Your draft horses, now your per trons, they're running

05:49 - for your average county fair horse, 10 to 15,000 probably.

05:53 - Your big hitch horses, there are tens of even hundreds of thousands to buy them.

05:59 - You'll never see me on any of them.

06:10 - The draft horse has three different breeds in it, you have your per-trons that come, like I said, the

06:14 - black, the white, or the gray, and also there is 10 or brown ones, but they're few and far between.

06:18 - Then you have the Belgians that you see out in the Amish fields all the time.

06:26 - They come in a strawberry or a blonde color and then you have the client

06:30 - nails and everybody knows the client's nail because of the Budweiser clients.

06:34 - We get asked a hundred times a day, are they

06:36 - client's nails just because they're big horses?

06:39 - You can always tell a client's nail or a shire

06:43 - by the long hairs on their leg called feathers.

06:58 - The feathers on their legs was bred into them for the switchgrass over in

07:02 - Scotland that cut their legs, so they grew that hair to protect their legs.

07:10 - Oh, yeah. Everybody has how much do they eat?

07:13 - Well, they eat a little bit more than your typical riding horse.

07:17 - My horses all get a gallon of green in the morning, the gallon of green at night.

07:23 - At home, they have brown bell to them at all times in the winter, summertime

07:27 - they all have the grass they can eat in the field at night when they're out.

07:31 - But on typical they can eat a bell, a bell and a

07:34 - half a day, that keeps them just at their size.

07:39 - They drink about 30, 40 gallons of water a day.

07:54 - You want to need those key cart notes that you would reach horse post to make.

08:02 - We're normally, we normally would have a draft horse show here tomorrow,

08:05 - but unfortunately this overlaps with two other shows this year.

08:13 - The six-horse hitch world finals out in Kansas, Kansas City, Kansas, and then also down in

08:17 - Harrisburg starting on Thursday Friday, Saturday is the Keystone International Livestock Show.

08:28 - All my friends that used to come and put a demo show on for us here,

08:31 - they're already committed to go to that show, so it's just me this year.

08:40 - Like you see there, all it took was a little whistle

08:43 - for me and it got their attention and they knew to go.

08:47 - That's why you always keep your lead horses

08:50 - have to be the ones that listen the best to you.

08:57 - Like I said earlier, all I got is these lines of my

09:01 - hands to stop them and my voice to tell them what to do.

09:10 - If you watch their ears, don't look the one on the left in the lead too much, he always pins his ears back all the time,

09:15 - but they'll put their ears back, listen to me, then they'll put their ears forward to see what's coming ahead of them.

09:22 - And also if you look on their bridles, they have blinders on, and that is to keep

09:26 - them from seeing anything coming beside them or from behind them so they don't spook.

09:32 - They're always looking forward to what they're running into or running at.

09:41 - This wagon is a fifth-wheeled hitch wagon, it is shrunk

09:45 - down from the freight wagons back in the olden days.

09:49 - And actually this wagon, like I said, it's a

09:51 - fifth wheel that wheels on the front are smaller.

09:54 - I can actually turn this all the way around and spin my back tires on the dime.

10:03 - Because they would actually come up alongside a building like this.

10:11 - Okay, I'm not going to do it, but they can actually talk

10:14 - these horses back in the day all the way to their left,

10:20 - just swing that wagon straight around and load on a dock right here, then

10:24 - they'd fan them to the side to the right or the left, it didn't matter.

10:33 - And park them that way, so the freight other freight wagons could still go up the road,

10:37 - and then when they're ready to go, they'd fan them the opposite way if they have to or not,

10:41 - whichever way they need to go on.

10:45 - On their merry way to go deliver their freight.

10:51 - Like I said, hours don't like to stand too much either.

11:00 - What else, Judge?

11:08 - If you have any questions, just give a holler along the rail,

11:12 - somebody in the center will try and stop and talk to you.

11:35 - Twenty-two, twenty-one, nineteen, and twelve.

11:41 - Twenty-two, twenty-one, nineteen, and twelve.

11:45 - These are great, too, the base of the top of their shoulder,

11:48 - which is sitting right underneath the collar right now.

11:52 - So they're not measured to the tip of their ears when their heads up,

11:55 - they're measured to their wethers, which is right underneath their collar.

11:59 - So my leaders and my white horse here are all right

12:02 - around eighteen, one eighteen, two hands tall.

12:05 - And then my giddy and horse here on my right

12:08 - side on my wheel, he's about seventeen-three.

12:12 - But back in his day, he could hold his head up

12:15 - high and make himself look like he was a big boy.

12:18 - Then she'd get in.

12:23 - What else, Judge?

12:45 - These guys weigh around sixteen to seventeen hundred pounds.

12:51 - When they were a little bit about three of the four new rooster

12:55 - up front there, he probably pushes around seventeen to eighteen

12:59 - because he's a little younger, still kept his muscle tone as of now.

13:24 - So he's a little bigger than the rest, weight-wise.

13:32 - When we're showing these horses, like my wife just said, we

13:36 - always come in at the truck because that's their best gate.

13:40 - Then you saw I just did the reverse.

13:44 - We just don't turn these guys right around and go back the other way.

13:47 - We cut the arena off on a diagonal.

13:51 - And then actually if there's somebody else coming the

13:53 - other way, we stay on the inside until we pass everybody.

13:57 - And then go back out on the rail.

14:02 - And normally I'm going to show we only walk

14:05 - twenty steps and then we're back to the truck.

14:09 - Laughing a half around the arena.

14:13 - Laughing a half, two laps around line up, back

14:15 - a couple steps and out the gate you're going.

14:18 - It's a quick little, only takes about ten minutes to do a class.

14:26 - Another thing that you notice is we have a second bit in their mouth.

14:30 - It's called an over checked bit.

14:32 - That's to keep their head up a little bit.

14:35 - I don't have my guys checked up as high as they really could be.

14:38 - And that's just because we're here for fun.

14:41 - We're not here for show.

14:43 - And that's to keep them from keeping their head dropping their head too low.

14:48 - And if they drop their head, they can actually

14:50 - take a hold of the bit and walk with it.

14:53 - And I can't control them the best.

14:57 - So easy walk voice.

15:00 - Walk.

15:06 - Well, people that know me is going to be amazed by

15:09 - this, but I'm running out of things to talk about.

15:12 - Stop laughing, Rachel.

15:15 - Like I said, we're down in the yoder way barn.

15:18 - Feel free to stop down.

15:20 - There's a stall of a clean harness to clean.

15:23 - Everybody just wants to pet the horses or rush them,

15:25 - but they got to do the other work behind the scenes too.

15:28 - As soon as we say that work, they all disappear.

15:31 - I knew too.

15:32 - Oh, I knew too.

15:33 - Yeah, that's right.

15:34 - I knew.

15:37 - 2022, 19, 21, 22, and 12.

15:43 - So we're going to do a couple more laps here.

15:45 - And then we're going to head back to the barn.

15:47 - I appreciate you guys sitting in here and

15:49 - listening to me block my gums for the night.

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