Post by Josie on Oct 25, 2014 12:31:58 GMT
I'm very lucky to live less than half an hour from the Utterly Horses shop in Essex, and when I went for the first time a few weeks ago I found they had several little carts with very broken harnesses, but I could see they had potential and seemed like the right sort of size for the Julip donkey, so I came home with five
I've had great fun (and spent many hours!) fixing the harnesses up and adding/altering bits to make them fit, and I *think* I've finished 3 out of the 5 I came home with. I'm at uni at the moment and all the carts and harnesses are at home because I've run out of buckles and want to do the harnesses justice, and not insult them with my crude paperclip imitation ones Hopefully when I go home on Thursday I'll be able to nip out to UH and stock up, with a view to getting them all done and bringing them to the show on Saturday. Four of them will be for sale at lunch time if anyone's interested!
This is the first one, not quite finished at this point as you can see. This one is maybe 90% of the original old dusty leather harness the cart came with (the bridle and reins are new and made to fit). The harness started out unable to detatch from the actual cart and the chains were attached in bizarre places, which I've since sorted since this pic. You can see the broken leather around the breastcollar as well. All sorted now! As you can see I didn't really understand how a harness worked at this point, hence why the back of the harness is under the hind legs as opposed to round the back of the haunches, heh.
The harness of the second one was a lot more damaged, so I've completely replaced the front part of the harness and made it more of an exercise/scurry set. The padding under the roller has been trimmed down since this was taken
And I'm going to share this photo because it was an entertaining accident when I accidentally flicked my rider off the cart and he ended up on the floor dragging poor Nutmeg
The third one I sadly don't have any photos of yet, but started as a cart that came harness-less. So the harness has been made from scratch and is fully adjustable, in order to fit most of the ponies! It has buckles at the crupper, roller, breast straps etc and fits my donkey and my show cob once you've had a fiddle with the fit.
Three down, two to go!
I've had great fun (and spent many hours!) fixing the harnesses up and adding/altering bits to make them fit, and I *think* I've finished 3 out of the 5 I came home with. I'm at uni at the moment and all the carts and harnesses are at home because I've run out of buckles and want to do the harnesses justice, and not insult them with my crude paperclip imitation ones Hopefully when I go home on Thursday I'll be able to nip out to UH and stock up, with a view to getting them all done and bringing them to the show on Saturday. Four of them will be for sale at lunch time if anyone's interested!
This is the first one, not quite finished at this point as you can see. This one is maybe 90% of the original old dusty leather harness the cart came with (the bridle and reins are new and made to fit). The harness started out unable to detatch from the actual cart and the chains were attached in bizarre places, which I've since sorted since this pic. You can see the broken leather around the breastcollar as well. All sorted now! As you can see I didn't really understand how a harness worked at this point, hence why the back of the harness is under the hind legs as opposed to round the back of the haunches, heh.
The harness of the second one was a lot more damaged, so I've completely replaced the front part of the harness and made it more of an exercise/scurry set. The padding under the roller has been trimmed down since this was taken
And I'm going to share this photo because it was an entertaining accident when I accidentally flicked my rider off the cart and he ended up on the floor dragging poor Nutmeg
The third one I sadly don't have any photos of yet, but started as a cart that came harness-less. So the harness has been made from scratch and is fully adjustable, in order to fit most of the ponies! It has buckles at the crupper, roller, breast straps etc and fits my donkey and my show cob once you've had a fiddle with the fit.
Three down, two to go!