We have been blessed with horses that will just walk into any trailer. I love those types of horses! But I guess all horses can't be easy loaders and well, we have one of those now. Or should I say, we had one of those!
One day we spent six hours trying to get this horse into the trailer. We finally admitted defeat, but ended on a good note. I was determine to fix this horse and I decided to listen to the 'old timers'. From my observations, the old timers really do know what they are talking about.
We have been told that if you will feed a horse in a trailer, they will learn to go in and out with no problem. So we put our trailer in the round pen. Then we gutted the trailer so that it was just a ramp going in to an open area. We started by putting the feed on the floor half way in the trailer. After doing that about four times, we put the food on the floor in the far end of the trailer. The horse ate there for about a week.
Next we put the partition back into the trailer and set it up so the horse could only walk up on one side of the trailer to eat. We hung the bucket so that it was close to the horse when he walked into the trailer. Again, we did this for five days, twice a day. Then we put the bucket on the other side of the rail so the horse would have to walk all the way into the trailer to eat. This was good and again, he ate in the trailer twice a day.
The final phase was getting him into the trailer and putting the butt bar up and hooking him up to the chain. Then we put the food in the trailer. He now will load into the trailer with no problems. This has made a huge difference and we are very thankful that we have "old timers" in our lives that are willing to teach!
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