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Why do carriage horses have their eyes covered2007-11-24 21:23:18

Hope this helps!

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so they don't get distrated from the envioment and people and oter moving objects.

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Hello; Carriage horse wear "BLINKERS" to keep them calm. Horses are a flight animal and spook at the strangest things.A leaf russeling will set them off. It takes a lot more to train a horse to cart than saddle. The horse is trained to SIDE PASS in order to make turning around seem easy. They put trust in the drive as their herd leader...

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The use of blinders for driving horses is more because of convention than for any real purpose. I've worked with driving horses and I have a friend who trained Standardbred harness race horses for 15 years, and most horses could be safely driven without any problems in an "open" bridle. Significantly, when you look at harness racing horses, most of them are driven with open bridles.

FWIW, if you're into driving horses, a driving bridle without blinders is a special order. The places that make harness equipment, including driving bridles, just make them with blinders because that's the way they've always been made. I didn't particularly like driving my horse with a blind bridle, because I had to drive on bridle paths that were rather narrow and fenced on both sides. I wanted my horse to be able to see the fence. So I just swapped out his driving bridle for the English bridle I rode him with, replaced the Eggbutt French snaffle I rode him with with the driving snaffle, clipped the driving reins onto it and away we went. No problems. It really is not more difficult to drive a horse with an open bridle than one with a blind bridle.