November 11, 2021

Understanding Trailer Loading Problems

11 minutes

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Nothing is more frustrating than having a horse refuse to get on the trailer, especially if you need to home!

There's a reason behind the horse's unwillingness and it's usually not stubbornness.
Would you want to ride in an uncomfortable car? No? Neither does your horse! We'll start with the ones that are already trained. A lot of people just don't realize how bad the trailer can be.

When I was training safe trail horses, I could load three horses in 90 seconds by myself. At the trailhead, I’d see people who had been out riding and their horse didn't want to load again. They’ve got a brand new trailer and they're wondering how I can load three horses in 90 seconds. They're sitting there for 10 or 15 minutes trying to get the horse to get back in the trailer.

If you have a well-trained horse that doesn't want to get in a trailer you should look at your trailer. Every time I bought in a horse trailer I've asked them to balance the tires Have you ever driven down the freeway at 60 miles an hour when one weight has fallen off your tire and the whole thing is shimmying? That's what happens in the horse trailer with these unbalanced horse trailer tires. You're putting the horse in something that has a lot of vibration so it feels like an earthquake!

The second thing you need to look at is where the bridles and halters hang. Imagine when you're going down a bumpy road and the horse feels vibration up their legs, and the bridles and halters going bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

So what I did is I got an old yoga mat and I glued it on that wall, to prevent the banging.
The other thing that many people do is clean out the horse trailer. Then it might smell like bleach or something and the horse didn't want to get in it.

I bought an 18-month old black Arab stallion that had never been on a trailer. I went into his stall with a wheelbarrow and picked up shavings that had his urine and poop on them. I put it in the horse trailer and spread it all around. I walked him up to it and he sniffed it. It's like he was saying, “Oh, there's my poop and pee, I must have already been here. So it must be safe to get in.”

He just loaded right up.

We need to be looking at things from the horse's point of view. At one bodywork clinic, there were horses that wouldn’t l

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