How to use a collar and hames with a Pleasure style harness

Pleasure harnesses are such a great bang for your buck! They can be used with a breast collar style collar as well as with a collar and hames. The breast collar options are many with the Pleasure style harness:

• Traditional style straight breast collar with the sewn on traces
• Standard Curve breast collar with buckle in traces
• Deluxe style breast collar with buckle in traces
• SuperFlex collar with buckle in traces
• Comfy Collar with buckle in traces
• Collar and hames!

First what is a Pleasure style harness? On our website that would be a Comfy Fit harness, a Comfy Color harness, the Pleasure harness, the Trail harness, or the MaraFUN harness. Any harness that has comes with a breast collar. Because the breast collar is separate from the rest of the harness this means you can simply switch the breast collar out and use a collar and hames when you need to drag something with a low line of draft such as a tire, an arena drag, a sled, or a vehicle with a low line of draft.

One of the reasons I suggest people upgrade to the buckle in traces when they purchase the Pleasure style harness with the straight style breast collar is so the traces can be used on the collar.

We sell a short tug that can be put on a set of hames, or you can purchase the hames WITH the short tugs on them. This will allow you to buckle your traces right to the hames! (If you want the farm style hames with short tugs we can do that as well! Just shoot us an email at marketing@chimacumtack.com and I can get that set up for you.)

If you have buckle in traces you can use the traces you already have with your collar and hames.

Often the traces that you use with a breast collar will be a little too short to use with a low line of draft. This leads me to the reason I suggest that people always choose the COMBO end trace and not the plain slot end… so you can use heel chains and lengthen your traces that way. (We have lots of different kinds of heel chains. Simply type “heel chain” into the search bar, then WAIT for the drop down menu to appear and click on the heel chains that you need.)

You can attach the heel chain to the end of the traces with a Quick Release Shackle and then attach the chain to your single tree with another Quick Release Shackle. **PLEASE BE SURE YOU PUT THREAD LOCKER ON THE SCREW OF THE QUICK RELEASE SHACKLE IF YOU PURCHASE THEM FROM US!!!!!!

If you have the three slot traces and want to lengthen them using heel chains, you can use the Trace Adapter to add a ring to your slot ends. I feel this isn’t quite as secure as just getting the traces with the combo end, but it is a way to use what you already own!

The Farm/work, Parade, and Logging harnesses come with hames that are attached to the entire back half of the harness. It is not possible to use a breast collar with this style harness. These harnesses can only be used with a collar and hames and should be used for pulling vehicles and drags with a low line of draft.

Hopefully this blog cleared up just what you’ll need to start sledding with your pony or horse, or to set your equine up to do some work around the farm!

**All the words that are colored and in bold are links to products or other blog posts. If you want to see what the part looks like that is highlighted and in bold then simply click on the word! That will take you to the product.