awful lesson learned

Friend has a lorry that still has the old-fashioned springs that lift the ramp.....

anyhow loading a pony, he reared up, toppled off side of the ramp, and managed to get his hind leg in-between the spring and the lorry....

so horse is virtually led upside down with his off-hind stuck in the air, his head, neck and withers on the floor beside ramp....and he panics......a full 5 minutes later, he just lays there....

meanwhile Fire Rescue are called, and because the spring is obviously "spring-loaded", the rescue proves to be a long...3hours..and tricky one!!!

eventually the spring was removed...apparently it had a serious kick when released...luckily avoiding ALL present

exhausted pony was released..only slightly doped....virtually unscathed!!!!

he is stabled at present with hardly any skin on his cannon bone but no visible fracture!!!!

vet thinks he's been one very lucky boy!!!!!

needless to say, the lorry is now redundant and she is getting a newer one without external springs........
 
Goodness me - what a terrible unfortunate thing to happen to the poor lad.
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(((((HUGS)))) hope he's ok - keep us all posted LB x
 
Bloody hell, I HATE anything to do with horses and springs on vehicles! On our Bateson trailer, they have a silly hook where the spring is hooked over for the front ramp. One of my horses (yes, the panickiest one) managed to hook his headcollar over the spring bit and pull it off the hook, meaning his full weight was on the spring! He obviously went ballistic. He knocked my mum flat in the panic and got very near numerous silly spectators who decided to watch... I meanwhile was cutting off his headcollar with scissors whilst he was pulling as hard as he could backwards. Bloody dangerous. Eventually I cut through and he was free. I have since taped over all hooks!!
 
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Sound awful. Was the lorry not fitted with gates at the back that go either side of the ramp?

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nope, vehicle was a '85 cargo.......it still has 4 months plate!!!
 
One of my most memorable (for the wrong reasons) experiences with horses was with a lorry that had an electric ramp. This was in the late 80s, and I think these things were rather new. Anyway, the idea was that the ramp could be raised and lowered by pressing a switch - you didn't have to lift it. We thought that it had lowered properly and started to load a horse on, but when the horse got to the top of the ramp it dropped around four inches leaving a big gap between ramp and lorry. The horse's foreleg got trapped and we couldn't free it. Luckily we were able to get a mechanic out to dismantle the ramp but it took around an hour and the horse was in shock. No major injury to the soft tissue, luckily, but the leg was skinned almost to the cannon bone. Horrible experience. I truly doubt that horse ever loaded onto a lorry again, poor sod.
 
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Sound awful. Was the lorry not fitted with gates at the back that go either side of the ramp?

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JM07, Gypsycob means the the wooden gates, that 'guide' the horses up the ramp, some are a solid piece of plywood others are like slats of hardwood, that concertina down the side of the ramp.
 
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Sound awful. Was the lorry not fitted with gates at the back that go either side of the ramp?

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JM07, Gypsycob means the the wooden gates, that 'guide' the horses up the ramp, some are a solid piece of plywood others are like slats of hardwood, that concertina down the side of the ramp.

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i KNOW what she means.........
 
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there weren't any gates coming down the ramp......

it was (is) an old box....which will now be scrapped....

ETS...sorry gypsycob....but vehicles of that ae aren't required to have gates....
 
exactly the same thing happened at xc on Sunday...unless it was the same person/horse.....so lucky everyone was alright - sounds absolutely lethal.
 
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