“Gentle giants” — that’s a phrase often used in speaking of draft horses. It’s true they’re massive; their muscular bulk makes them loom larger even when they’re no taller than many riding horses. The greatest among them are awesome, their physical presence almost overpowering up close, your own puny insignificance dwarfed by their immense height and girth, their unimaginable strength. If they wished to, they could crush you like a bug.
And yet they don’t. Though draft horses, like any other equine, can lose it, can panic and freak out or become enraged, mostly they bear patiently with the small two-legs that buzz about them, commanding their obedience and ordering their lives. Working around my own two horses, a Thoroughbred and a Morgan, I’m often struck by how easily they could defy me, muscle over me, tell me “Hell no!” and yet they do what I say, go where I tell them; and they’re nowhere near as huge and strong as a Percheron or Shire, who could demolish a human annoyance, if they chose, without breaking a sweat. But they choose obedience.
Humans are lucky drafters are so biddable (though they can take much of the credit, having bred for docility in the breeds over many centuries), and not just in terms of safe handling. For most of recorded history draft horses have pulled the plows and wagons of agriculture and transport, skidded logs out of the forest, hauled ore from the mineheads, mowed fields for the hay that fed them through the winter, dragged graders down dirt roads, and in multitudes of ways powered the people who selectively bred them to their massive greatness.
