Lessons in Trailer Loading

20 June 2010 4 Comments

You learn something new every day.

Today I learned that “The best laid plans of mice and men…” derives from a 1785 poem by Robert Burns, “To a Mouse.”

Yesterday I learned about trailer loading. And not loading.

One of the owners at the barn was taking her horse to the chiropractor/massage person and I was tagging along. As it happens, things were running a little late when it was finally time to load the horse. We led her up to the trailer and she marched right along right up to the point where she… didn’t.

It soon become clear that we were not going to make the appointment. We moved the truck and trailer so that it wouldn’t be in anyone’s way and settled down to the day’s new task: teaching the mare that she was, in fact, going to load. With the appointment rescheduled, we had all day to work on this.

Enter Awesome Bystander.

If you have any doubt about the state of humanity, allow me to disperse just a little of it.

Understand: we’re in Texas. It’s 90 degrees and wicked sunny. Awesome Bystander offered to help anyway.

She quickly and fairly established a few rules: mare would stay lined up straight with the trailer and not swing her rump around. Mare would step forward once when asked. Mare would stop when asked. Mare would back when asked.

Everything would go really well until mare was at the trailer (it was a step up); she’d walk right up to the trailer but didn’t want to put a foot in. Awesome Bystander kept lightly asking her to step up by tapping just behind the girth with a dressage stick, and rewarding the smallest positive movements from the mare. Every once in a while they backed away from the trailer, reestablished go/halt/back, and tried again. This allowed her to reposition the mare (who sometimes got too close to the trailer to lift her front legs without banging them against the floor) and to relax the mare (hey, here was a task that she absolutely understood and could do correctly!).

No beating, no punishment, just calm, patient insistence and a reward as soon as the mare thought about stepping on the trailer. Best of all, Awesome Bystander explained what she was doing and why each step of the way and made a few recommendations to the owner as well. And, eventually, the mare loaded. It was pretty much that anti-climactic.

Awesome Bystander then unloaded the mare. She and the owner talked for a few minutes, and she drove off into the sunset the Texas midday sun. The owner is, believe me, planning a suitable thank-you gift for her.

The owner then loaded the mare back up. It took a few minutes, but only a few. We shut the trailer and went for a drive around the property, unloaded the horse, and let her graze for a while. Then I loaded her in the trailer—the key here being that we 1) wanted her to load several times and 2) wanted her to load for different people.

I know the owner intends to work on loading intensively for the next little while to be sure the mare is solid on it. The chiropractor/massage appointment has been rescheduled for later this week and hopefully I’ll still be able to tag along (I’ve never been to one, so it should be fascinating).

I apologize for the lack of funny, but I thought it was beyond awesome that someone would spend an hour in the middle of a Texas summer day and help with a loading issue.

Horses and Riding, Progress and Training, Training the Rider, Training the Horse

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