Trailer Loading Your Horse Without a Trailer



Posted: Sunday, May 11, 2008

by
Cowboy Horse Training

I think most horse trainers would agree, one of the most common problems horse owners have is trailer loading. There is nothing more aggravating than having your friends pull up to pick you up for a nice, relaxing trail-ride outing and having your horse refuse to get on board. Ideally, the way to avoid this scene altogether, is to work on this problem way before the day of the trip. But this is not always safe. If your horse has a very dramatic reaction to this task, you may not want to be practicing this with this big hard metal object with sharp edges and bolts, et cetera. This may be what has caused her fear of loading in the first place. Injuries can easily happen in a trailer, which could be a traumatic experience that will be engrained in your horse's brain forever. Or maybe you don't own a trailer at all. How could you practice trailer loading without actually using a trailer? I will explain here a solution I came up with for that problem.

Not only have I myself been in the situations mentioned above, but once I was called to give a presentation on trailer loading in a small area INSIDE a building. That is what prompted me to come up with a better solution than using an actual trailer. I decide I needed to build something that would still make the horse a little apprensive, but be safe. Thus, the creation of "the box."

It was a simple box built with 2" x 8" boards and plywood. First you build a frame with the 1 x 8s to fit squarely under a 4' x 8' piece of plywood. You will also need two additional support boards across the middle, one in each direction. This is important, because you don't want the board to break from the weight of the horse, creating more trauma. So, at this point, you have a frame with a "plus" in it. Simply nail the plywood to the top of the frame, and you have your box.

Now you are ready to start training. You will introduce your horse to the box. Get her confidently stepping onto the box and backing off of the box. The loud hollow sound the box will make an excellent desensitizer. It does not feel natural to the horse to be standing on this odd object, much like the trailer does not feel natural.

Of course there are numerous methods taught by various trainers on how to trailer load. You can apply any of these methods to "loading" on the box. Practice here until she is totally at ease and loading with great confidence then you will be able to safely transfer these results to the real trailer and never miss a trail-ride outing again.

Good luck

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