I love the gentle demeanor of the drafts.

There's something soothing about being in the quiet company of one of these big boys. Here Toby and I are working on our circle, some lateral longing, and on halting straight on the circle, with Toby not turning in towards me.

Sometimes the Percheron reminds me of one of those big, strapping cowboys you see two-stepping around the sawdust dance floor with a petite partner scooped up in his arms. And sometimes, of the freight train with a couple of behemoth engines that roars by the ranch at 11:00 AM.

When I am tacking Toby up with bridle, cavesson, surcingle, side reins, and he stands patiently (he's not tied here), even putting his head down for me so I can wrangle with and adjust and re-adjust that heavy-duty, nearly-Medieval, Mad-Max-Thunderdome-ish cavesson (I forgot I'd used it earlier on my daughter's Andalusian), I'm afforded a fleeting glance of what it might have been like to work with a team of drafts on a farm at the turn of the century. (Although I'm sure putting on a harness is much more complicated.) I read somewhere recently that the death of a working draft horse on a farm was reason for a child to stay out of school for a family day of mourning. That's how close these horses and humans were.

I understand.