Rural Heritage April/May 2026

of brush and a good-sized ditch between us and the town road. A pretty mean dog lived on the other side of the road, and he liked to rush out in the road to attack cars, bikes, horses, whatever. Of course he had no interest in crossing our ditch, hedge or fence, but did our horses know that? On this particular occasion the dog's timing was perfect. Just as the spreader was coming empty and the team was approaching the end of the field to make a sweeping turn to come back, the dog charged across the road with a giant barking attack. As the teamster continued in their turn, the dog fell from the view of the horses behind the blinders. As the attack peaked, the horses bolted away from the attack. An empty, engaged manure spreader is a pretty scary thing, but the beginning teamster did a good job of staying with the horses and machine and, by good fortune, had a large area to run in. They gradually slowed and stopped the team. This was a pivotal moment for me in my appreciation of how horses might benefit from working without blinders. This young teamster probably had some other choices that might have prevented the runaway, as well. They likely had a moment or two to realize the dog was coming (stay tuned into what is going on around you!) and could have just stopped the team and left them standing facing the road and the dog. The horses might not have liked that, but, in a moment, they would have realized the dog wasn’t coming any further. This event was one of the first steps in my interest in what it would be like to work horses without blinders. I have seen many smaller examples since then where horses seem to benefit from seeing what is around them. Training horses to work without blinders should be divided into two parts. Green horses that have never had blinders on in the first place and any older horses that someone may be interested in trying to take the blinders off. Let’s start with the green horses, as it is much simpler. I don’t think I do anything fundamentally different without blinders than I would do with them. In either case, it is always a matter of what you can do to prepare a horse for a new experience before they get the full effect. Controlling their exposure to challenging things is the same objective in both cases. Even for a blindered young horse, they still need to find ways to “feel” and “hear” new things behind them in a way they can accept. Maximizing your control of the situation and managing the extent of

as a team with blinders. Over the last 20 years I have used open-faced horses for many hours on a baler with a motorized PTO cart, I have used high wheel rakes, pin wheel rakes with hydraulic lifts for each side, and rotary rakes. I’ve used ground drive PTO carts with four basket tedders and even pulled a brush hog. Over the last 15 years my horses have all been able to go down the road from field to field with traffic going by without blinders. My horses have been in parades and other events. Truthfully, I think traffic that goes 50, 60, or more miles per hour, is one case where blinders might help some horses deal with these things flashing past them. Some of my horses can do that too, but for the most part I have chosen to avoid those conditions. I just don’t like it and don’t think I would like it even if the team was wearing blinders. Many years ago, we had a small mishap with a team of horses and a beginning teamster while they were spreading manure in our front field. These horses were wearing blinders. It is a large open field and a good place to learn how to operate machinery and a good place to work horses. At the far end of the field there is a high tensile fence, a short hedge row Reva Seybolt drives Bart (a Suffolk/Cleveland Bay cross) and Star.This is the horse Donn took the blinders off when he was upset with the fencing job.

April/May 2026

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