If you want to guarantee a crowd of adults with children,
drive up with a van full of draft horses to unload.
The Percherons were arriving for their segment of
the Indiana State Fair.
The oohing and ahhing doesn't stop outside,
as adults stand in awe and admiration as the huge,
amiable creatures are put into their stalls.
Their weight averages about one ton and, if they took it
into their mind, they could get out of their stalls
without too much difficulty.
During the week, the draft horse classes are among
the most popular, as spectators watch Percherons, Clydesdales,
and Belgians being shown pulling carts and wagons
made of two, four and six-in-hand teams.
4 comments:
Incredible the weight these animals can drag. I love the first picture.
Yay! I love draught horses. Our local heavy horse is the Suffolk Punch (http://suffolkhorsesociety.org.uk/) and our village pub gets its regular deliveries of wooden casks of Adnams Ale in carts pulled by an immaculate pair. Feet the size of manhole covers. Beautiful creatures.
They are remarkable, remarkably beautiful animals.
The draft horses are my favorites, too. I go every year especially to see the Belgians in their 6-horse hitch classes, which can be so large that the teams fill the arena. One of the best sights is to see little kids about 2 or 3 years old being held up to stroke the velvet muzzle of a horse whose head is more than twice the kids' size. And the time I saw a boy of about 10 peering up the nostril of one horse to find out how far he could see.
They are just the best animals. We should cut back on the number of cars on our roads so the horses could return to their dray jobs.
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