Spring Fever and Trailer Loading

You’ve been home all winter, working outside until the tips of your fingers sting. Carrying fifty-pound bags of feed over ice, falling down but not feeling a thing. Partly the cold and partly with so many layers you feel nothing, but also can’t quite sit up. So, you lay there a while plotting the smart way out of this predicament and whether you need to install grab bars outside. The goat wanders by, gives you the side eye, and sees nothing worth scavenging. Fine. It’s come to that.

As you consider a belly crawl to the nearest fence, you see the object of your passion, your raison d’être, the big what for. The perfect embodiment of all your childhood dreams and future fantasies. Your elegant horse, who looks like a thousand-pound stuffed toy that was abandoned by the side of the road in 1936. Muddy, matted, and not recognizable by color. Just then, you hear a small voice in your head that sounds like your mother from beyond the grave, saying it really is time to quit your foolish…

And a miracle happens. It’s the same annual, but totally unbelievable, miracle. It’s a robin. The next day, a meadowlark serenades you, trilling to the sky. The green can’t be far behind. Hibernation is over, you pull off your Elmer Fudd hat and stand tall. Seconds later, the trails are calling or the show schedule dings its arrival on your phone. Riding with people you don’t even like sounds fun. You just want off the farm.

It must be spring. People are asking questions about trailer loading. Naturally, I’m nostalgic about the horses and donkeys I’ve hauled. It’s a special thing to share with them. At my first professional training job, I trained eleven weanlings to load. You really want to get it right with youngsters. And that’s just what I was doing. We’d walk up a hill to the trailer, quietly step inside, and then return to the herd, back down the hill. The icy hill. So the babies and I would take one step at a time, halt careful and quiet, and then take another step. I soon got fired from that job. Complaints from the head trainer. You can fill in the blanks.

There were years of hauling my own horses, hauling relinquished horses for the rescue, and hauling clients to shows. I made a standing offer to haul any horse to the vet for clients and sometimes people they knew. I got one colicking mare to the vet in time, but the vets could not save her. Several hours later, she was euthanized and her owners blamed me. Loudly hurling insults, because they were mad and hurting. I apologized again and again. Hauling horses isn’t for the skittish.

If you are new to hauling, make sure you have the right trailer. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it must be tall and wide and light-colored inside. Then start several hours early, not that time matters. Give your horse a gut supplement every single trip. Hook up the trailer, and then double check each part. Prepare ahead with a checklist of what you need to take along with the horse. Load it all up and then double check the gear. The goal is that once the horse is in the trailer, you roll away. Then triple check the hook up again. Drive slowly, like your grandmother, if she was decrepit and loved horses. Take extra slow care on corners. If city cars honk, you’re going the right speed.

If you are not new to hauling, no worries. Whatever happened last fall, your horse hasn’t forgotten a thing. If it was all good, it still is. Go slow and it’ll be fine.

If things didn’t go well before. If you tried twenty different techniques and none worked, but now your horse is even worse than they were, you have a problem. They are right to think you’re inconsistent and not all that trustworthy. Impatience or frustration feels like a threat to a horse. Maybe you tricked them into the trailer, teased them with food or threatened them with intimidating ropes to force them in. You hoped they’d get used to fear. That they’d forgive you. Maybe you are foolish enough to hope they’d forget the fight.

You tried all the online videos, but they are nonsense. Those techniques don’t work. And you’re right, they don’t. (Go to that link, I mean it.) Horses are not dirt bikes. They have emotion and memory, and above all else, they are flight animals. If you are not listening to their calming signals and responding to their concerns, why should they do what you want?

Start here: Did you get embarrassed when you needed a few tries to line up the hitch? Did your breathing go shallow when you dropped the coupler and cranked up the trailer jack? Are your shoulders up by your ears now? Are you running late? Do your feet slap the ground hard when you walk to get the halter? Did the gate latch to your horse’s pen stick and need a good loud whack to open?

Slow down. You’ve already told your horse there will be a fight and you haven’t haltered him yet.

What if your horse is fine in the trailer, but you are the nervous one? Maybe he doesn’t know why you’re anxious, but he better take a closer inspection of the trailer and try to see the scary thing you see. Is now a bad time to remind you that having a “connection” with a horse is more than sharing breath. And horses are not our therapists or children or saviors. They need us to be our best selves for them. And trailer loading issues are more common in people than in horses. So, maybe it’s another kind of spring cleaning needed before you’re ready to load up.

Meanwhile, don’t underestimate your horse’s intelligence. Any horse standing behind a trailer with the door open, knows the question. They don’t need to be retrained every trip. Most horses know what to do if we get out of the way. Your job is to not chatter or nag. Breathe, be tranquil, and trust the calming signal conversation will do the rest.

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