I know there are a few people who drive teams on this forum, so I thought maybe I'd ask my question here. What do you do when your team leans inward and pushes on each other? The gelding in my father's team does this when we drive on the road. Never anywhere else. He is on the right hand side, and the mare is on the left. She pushes back, but is much smaller than him. We took them to give rides in town once, and he pushed her so hard she slipped and fell several times, one of the times she smashed her nose on the pole and started bleeding. We use them for farm work, which they had never done when we got them, but the never do it then. Only ever on the road, but even then they are usually fine. If you are on a dirt road, or in a field, they are fine. We have tried giving him a flick with the whip on the inside, and it sorted him out for a while but my father started doing all the wrong things and it confused him more. (Abruptly dragging them to a stop without saying woah, holding him back and giving him a tap, tapping on the outside, giving them lots of slack in lines when starting out, so they jump forward and hit into it. ETC.) I took the reins for a while and they were pretty good on the road. Then again, I had them trotting. When I made them walk up the driveway they started again, and I rhythmically see sawed with the reins, and they would pull apart. I kept them moving through it, which I think was better than stopping them every time. I am going out on a bit of a limb on this forum, but has anyone else had this problem and had a way to fix it? They are an amazing team, but this is there only vice. I don't want to see them completely sour because their training is being undone for just one problem.
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