Difficult loader

[Tern]

Yes horse spaces are huge - quite a wide box and much wider than the ifor trailers. she is 15hh and it carries 16hh max. I have noticed she travels slightly herringbone but i can't get a 7.5tn through my lane without a struggle but would adore one And i could take partition out but as i said one horse space is farely huge and her balance is just uh oh i don't think she would be able to stand up.

 

[Echo Bravo]

I use to load my old boy, who didn't want to know, by running a lunge line up thru a ring out of the grooms door and standing next to said horse and everytime he took a step forward I would tighten the rope slightly, so he couldn't go backwards, roughtly 5 mins and he'd walk in. Now have to do this with my youngster come the summer after a bad experience going to the vets and coming back, the loading and coming back a lot longer.

 

[BeanyG]

My horse sounds quite similar to yours, she's a big powerful 17hh Cleveland bay X opinionated chesnut mare! (Must add that I adore her really!) we were told she was good to load but didn't have a need to until she needed to go to the vets and found she just refused, walked backwards and threatened to go up. On that occasion we were in a rush and the vet had to come sedate her to get her to the hospital.
However obviously this was going to be a problem so the next time she had to go somewhere I made sure we would have plenty of time.
She would get one hoof on the ramp and that would be it, no amount of pressure from behind helped and most things sent her backward more, she definitely knows her size!
The only method that I found that works on her is every time she stops going towards the ramp or even when she stops when she's on it is to back she up straight away, then ask her to move forwards again, if she doesn't move forwards I get her going back again. This continues till we get right into the box. After a while the amount of time we spend going backwards gets a lot less. We have used rope haters and such like on her but I did this with her normal leather head collar on.

Hope this might help you in some way, sorry if its impossible to understand!

N&F

 

[soloequestrian]

fill me in soloequestrian I'd just prefer to load more err au naturel as she is a bit stubborn and im not sure she'd really appreciate your invention - Though it does look very good to be very honest!

The harness isn't rocket science, it's just an easy way of using a 'bum rope' so that it stays secure even if the horse is moving about a lot - you don't need any hands to hold in in place as you do when using a rope or lunge line on its own. I sell it as a loading aid - it's meant to make the whole process a bit safer, especially when you have to load on your own or in a place that isn't secure - because you can clip the horse onto the breast bar without leaving its head, you can secure it in the trailer so that you can walk around the back and fasten the breech bar without fear of the horse escaping backwards. You also don't need any helpers behind the horse, which can upset many of them.
What I found in testing though was that for some horses (not all!) it has an almost miraculous effect - I took it to two horses whose owners said they were terrible to load and with the harness on they both walked straight into the trailer. Because I didn't see either of them attempt to load before using the harness, I struggled to believe that they were bad loaders, but the owners assured me that instant loading was a first for both of them. They were in two different places, no connection between them! I also loaded a friend's horse instantly with it when she had been struggling for several hours to get the horse in the box. It works every time for my intermittent loader - he is the one in the film on my website. I know there are horses out there for whom it hasn't had this effect - presumably it depends on a combination of the horse's personality, the handler's attitude and skill and what the horse is being asked to do. It does seem to be worth a try though - I know the examples I've actually seen are not the only ones, and one American lady wrote to me and said the harness seemed to have actually calmed her horse down prior to loading - she compared it to a Tellington wrap or Temple Grandin's squeeze machine.
Anyway, hope that helps. I wouldn't ever say that the harness was a definite solution for every loading problem, and it very much depends on things like the suitability of the vehicle, previous experience of travelling etc, but for horses that are being a bit naughty rather than showing genuine fear it has a good chance of making life a lot easier.