When we think about "perfect ground manners," stepping into a trailer on cue rates right up there with the horse opening his mouth to accept a bit. The last place that we want to have a fight is at the trailer, especially if there's a pressing need for him to step inside.
When we taught the horse to accept a bit (Perfect Horse, February 2006), the key to overcoming a bridling problem was to forget about the problem and break the bridling process into several steps. We didn't bring out the bit until we had the prerequisites of positioning and handling his head down pat.
That's the same approach we'll take with trailer loading. Think of trailer loading problems as primarily leading problems, and it will all make sense.
People often go to great lengths to try to determine why their horses won't go into a trailer. It may be that the horse is afraid of a small space, or the trailer is dark inside, or that it smells funny, or perhaps he has had a bad experience. In reality, we won't ever know.
Sometimes you can help a horse over his reluctance by using a bigger, more open trailer. But the bottom line is this: If a horse doesn't walk into the trailer on cue, he hasn't learned to load on cue. You'll want to practice it enough so that he can do it even in the dark. So we'll break down the process and focus on teaching, or re-teaching, him the individual pieces.
Trailer Loading Tips
- Practice the cues away from the trailer.
- Establish the horse's comfort zone on approach to the trailer.
- Aim the horse's nose into the trailer.
- Use the "go forward" cue to tell the back feet to move forward. They will tell the front feet to move.
- Load one foot, pet the horse, then unload that one foot.
Get Ready
Basically, to load a horse into a trailer, you point his nose in the trailer and give him a signal to "go forward." It works just like that when he's been trained. But getting to that stage requires working on a few aspects.
The most obvious is the go forward signal, both teaching it and practicing enough so the horse obeys, even when he'd rather not. The second is closing off the other options, so he realizes that stepping forward into a trailer is what we want him to do. Here's where having practiced the various bridlework cues that we've taught in previous lessons in this series will really pay off.
Pretend that you're sitting in the back seat of a car for the first time ever. Someone motions to you to do something, but you don't understand what they want. You try to turn around in your seat, but that isn't right. They wave at you, so you wave back. They get more intense, so you bounce up and down in the seat. Finally, they point to a strap behind your shoulder.
They want you to buckle your seat belt. But if you have never seen a seat belt, the last thing you'd think was to take the strap across your body and click it into a little plastic box by your opposite hip. And who would know that you have to push a little red button to release the strap?
That's how it is with horses. Even if they've been in a trailer before, they sometimes can't imagine that you want them to step up into that metal box. And they can't imagine how they'd ever get out.
To compound the problem, when a horse finally does step forward onto a trailer or ramp, what often happens? Someone whacks him from behind. So he assumes that stepping onto the ramp was a no-no. The horse struggles with someone being upset with him and doing something that seems foreign. Then he's faulted for being stubborn.
