I’ve had to of written on this before, but I can’t find it. So I’ll do it again.

Okay, now let’s review how a horses mind works. “Fight or Flight?” It’s born into every horse. Did you know that people are born with this instinct too? I never thought about it until it was called to my attention by my Pastor just recently. When we are scared, just like our horses, our body sends out adrenaline too. It’s automatic. To get us out of bad situations. God is so thoughtful.

Now in order for a horse to run from danger they need to have an escape route. Therefore, when a horse is contained there is no way out. This leads to a lot of trouble. It is dangerous for the horse, but can also be dangerous to a person close by. I’ve seen doors torn off, walls and fences broken, and anything in a horses path destroyed. We seem to forget just how powerful a horse is.

So let’s think about loading a horse into a trailer.

In the early 1970’s my friend had a horse who would not load, period. He either had a very bad experience or was just afraid of confined spaces. Some people are too. She had to move her horse to a new barn and it was too far to ride him over, so one of my mentors said that he could load any horse. Actually he bet us that he could do it. This was way before all these new trainers were even born. We took his bet. We waited patiently at the barn for him to arrive, and to let the games begin. Other, so called old time horse trainers had tried to no avail. So what does my friend show up with??? A pick up truck with a make shift stall in the bed. Now back when I was a kid very few people had horse trailers. You wouldn’t believe what people hauled horses in. We hauled ponies in the back seat of cars. Just took the seat itself out and put the ponies in. The back of the “stall” in the pick up would become a ramp. It was steep, but it worked. Don’t you know that this dang horse loaded the first trip up this ramp. My friend closed the ramp up and declared himself the winner.

Now to us this looked really scary. To the horse, it was just fine. He was looking around, enjoying the view. Trailered to the new barn with no problem.

So what made the difference? He could see. He didn’t feel closed in.

Now my friend came to trailer one of the horses from my barn last week. She uses her horse trailer weekly and her horse has no problem getting into her trailer. The two horses she was trailering, one from her barn and one from mine, had a whole different idea about this trailer. Her trailer is set up with a tack room in front and one at the rear doors. Mine does too, but we don’t use the back tack room. Ours is slid flat against the wall. You have this one narrow door for a horse to walk into the somewhat dark unknown. They didn’t buy into it. The horse from her barn took 45 minutes to load. Now the owner felt bad because she told the woman that her horse was an easy loader. Well in another open trailer he probably was, but you were asking a big warmblood to load through a narrow door into the unknown. The horse from my barn loaded easy, but on the way home neither would get back into that trailer. They finally did, but did this woman give it any thought as to way this all happened?

When my friend, years ago, explained to us why the horse (who never loaded into anything) got onto the back of this pick up, he explained that it was light, open, airy, and that’s why the horse loaded. He said always make sure that the trailer is light inside. Open all the windows and doors that you could. Make it feel inviting, not closed in, and they will load.

Now the friend who picked up the horses last week is a knowledgeable horse woman, her horse loaded so why shouldn’t every other horse. Well they just have different ideas about what is safe and what is a tiger trap.

The darkness on the inside of a trailer can be more of a problem if you have a horse that is coming from extreme sunlight into a dark trailer, especially if the horses eyes don’t adjust to the light and dark. I have one now that won’t walk into his stall if the light isn’t on or I don’t lead him in. He’s not that old, but his owner told me, when she moved him here, that he had a sight problem.

He’s also not fond of flashlights, a lot of horses aren’t. They don’t get the light dancing around on the ground or in the air for that matter. Quickest way to spook some horses is to snap on a flashlight at night.

So no matter what you are trying to do with a horse, always make it inviting. Let whatever person the horse trusts, extend the invitation. If the owner believes the horses isn’t going to do it, it won’t. You need someone with quiet confidence to load a horse. It may take a little longer if the horse doesn’t know or trust the person, but they will follow a true leader.