Harnessing A Family Tradition 

By B. Crawford 

If you look on the wall of the Shanahan Harness workshop, you will see the realization of a dream, a handsewn harness built by Garnet Shanahan in 1968. Making that harness by hand for his father’s draft horse, Garnet changed his life and the life of his family forever. 

“My dad was a tool and die maker,” says Dan Shanahan, Garnet’s son and the president of Shanahan Harness Shop LTD, “but he always liked working with leather. When he decided to make harness full time, he had two kids and one more on the way.  It was a gutsy move, but he also figured he could go back to his old job if things didn’t work out.” 

Things did indeed work out. Today, as Hank Williams Jr. would sing, Shanahan Harness is a family tradition – an extremely successful family tradition.   

“If you see the Budweiser Clydesdales, they wear our harness,” Dan says. “That keeps us pretty busy. There is always something to make or fix.”  

Shanahan Harness have been particularly busy this year, which marks the 90^th anniversary of America’s most famous draft horses. Anheuser-Busch introduced the Clydesdale team and the Budweiser beer wagon in 1933, to celebrate the end of prohibition. “We built some special martingales for the Clydesdales,” Dan explains. Martingales are the chain pieces that hang from the first two horses in the hitch. “We made martingales that featured a special 90^th anniversary logo. We even built some new harness for the dalmatians that ride on the wagons.” 

Have you ever enjoyed the magic of Disney theme parks? Shanahan Harness helps create that magic. You can see Dan’s harness at Disneyland, Walt Disney World and Euro Disney. “We are working on a harness for Disney California,” Dan says. “It is going to be an all-white leather harness for Cinderella’s all-white carriage.” Create a special harness for the world’s most beautiful and most beloved princess? No pressure, Dan. No pressure! 

Dan welcomes the pressure. Shanahan Harness can be seen in show rings across the United States and Canada. Over the years, Dan has branched out from making draft horse harness to making a variety of other harness including coaching harness for customers who show English mail coaches from the turn of the century, and combined driving harness, which are dual-purpose harness. “The combined harness has to look nice, but it also has to be very comfortable and functional for the horse.”  

Creating a Shanahan harness demands precision craftsmanship and patience. First and foremost, it’s all about the leather. “We put a lot of time into making sure that we cut out each piece of leather for each part of the harness from the right part of the hide.” Dan and his crew sew everything by hand. They do not use staples. And each piece is a custom piece. Shanahan Harness sweats all the details. Nothing is stock; each piece is a custom piece.  

“We make a lot of the hardware including all the decorative chain that goes on the harness,” Dan says. Dan and his team make the intricate pressed links of flat decorative chain from plain brass or chrome. They also make many of their harness buckles and other metal fittings using traditional sand molds. No detail is too small for Shanahan Harness.        

Each type of harness presents a different challenge. “The hard part of making a draft horse show harness is that it has to be heavy enough so that it looks like it belongs on a draft horse, but it also has to be light enough to be comfortable for the horse. And then it has to be strong enough to last for 20 to 30 years. There is always a fine line that has to be dialed in to make everything work right.” 

For Dan, the most challenging part of building a harness is building the bridle. “We spend a lot of time on bridles,” Dan explains. “The bridle has to be comfortable, so the fit has to be just right on. We spend a lot of time making the bridles. We are just very conscious of taking our time with the entire process.” 

Garnet Shanahan, Dan’s father who founded the business, took his time learning his craft. Garnet grew up working draft horses on his family farm in Ontario, Canada. When tractors replaced work horses on the farm, Garnett’s father kept a team of draft horses for show. Garnet made his first draft harness as a gift for his father in 1968. When Garnet took his handstitched harness to the Waverly, Iowa draft horse sale, he came back with two years of orders. It was then that Garnett decided to leave his career as a tool and die maker and go into harness making full time. 

Garnet proved to be an exceptional craftsman. He improved many aspects of the show harness including chains, trace hooks, trace plates and back pads. Garnet and his wife, Bea, kept Percheron and Belgian X Clydesdale draft horses and harnessed them with his own creations for competitions in Canada and the United States.  

Dan grew up showing horses and making harnesses. “I always enjoyed spending time in the shop,” he says. “It was my summer job for a while. And when I got out of school, it was really not a hard decision to go to work making harness full time. I basically learned everything I know from my father and from my mother, who always worked in the shop. Because he was self-taught for the most part, Garnet understood how important it was to teach me the right way to do things, which saved me from making a lot of the mistakes that he had to make. He was a real good teacher that way.”  

Since joining the family business in 1988, Dan has never looked back. “I really like working with leather,” he says. “It is satisfying.” 

In 1997, the Shanahan family moved their workshop from Maidstone, Ontario, to Huntsville, Ohio, in order to be close to the horse harness world, which is centered in Ohio and Indiana. Today, Shanahan Harness is an important part of that world.  

Dan’s workshop reflects his devotion to his craft. Leather cutting templates hang from the beams in the airy 50 x 40-foot workspace, which houses three or four workbenches and other equipment. Dan’s father’s first harness hangs over the small office located in a corner of the workshop. 

Dan’s business and his life changed dramatically in 2005, when he met Kristi Bloom, now Kristi Shanahan, at a carriage auction in Pennsylvania. “Kristi is from Pennsylvania, but she moved over here and started working in the shop. Kristi is really good at hand sewing. She does all of that for us now, which is a really, really important part of what we do here.” 

Dan says that he and Kristi make an excellent team. “We try to help one another and we are not competitive at all with each other. We have a real appreciation for the talent that each of us brings to the table.” 

Today, Dan and Kristi have four children: Connor, 12, Carter, 10, Willow, 8 and Emmett, 5. When they are not working in the shop, Dan and Kristi enjoy teaching their children how to ride and drive their horses. A 30 x 40-foot carriage house attached to their workshop houses the carriages that the Shanahans have collected over the years. Driving the carriages is not only fun for the family, but also a great way for the Shanahans to test out new ideas for their harness. 

“We have 18 horses,” Kristi says, “Our kids like to drive at shows and at home, both on trails and in the yard. They enjoy all aspects of driving; from the horse care to the harness making to the carriage care.” Their daughter, Willow, once told a reporter she loves driving because “we can all do it together.”   

    The Shanahans have a great business, a great family and a great lifestyle. In the future, Dan says he would like to make more carriage harness to diversify his business. “I think there is going to be a need for carriage harness, because harness makers are moving away from that and are focusing on saddles and other products.” 

Dan’s biggest hope is that Shanahan Harness Shop will continue to be a family business. “It would be great if I have one, or all of my kids, help with harness making or get into some kind of business dealing with leather. We get a lot of satisfaction out of working with leather and building things. And we get a lot of enjoyment seeing the harness being used by our customers. I would really like to pass that on to my kids. That would be my dream – to work with my kids.”  

For anyone who wants to learn more about the world of Shanahan Harness Shop LTD, Dan recommends attending one of the hundreds of shows presented by the North American Classic Series of horse shows. Keep a sharp eye on the show ring. The Shanahans have harnessed many series winners; just some of the more than 1,000 horses and ponies sporting Shanahan harness around the world. 

If you can’t make it to the horse shows, tune into Gentle Giants, a show on RFDTV. Or, look out for a carriage on your next visit to a Disney theme park. Or, wait for the Budweiser Clydesdales to clip-clop across your TV screen. When you see the Clydesdales, raise a toast to Shanahan Harness, an enterprise with its roots deep in traditional leather work that has grown into an internationally-recognized business and a fabulous family tradition.