Loading advice please

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hayley.t

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OK i've had a pretty crap day. I have moved with my ponies to the middle of nowhere and have been trying to organise a dentist for a little while now. My friend has leant me her trailer for the summer so I decided to take them to a yard near my work and get one of the vets from work to come out and do their teeth.

One is a 2 year old miniature horse who is really testing the boundaries at the moment. I loaded my normally perfectly behaved cob and then tried to load the mini, she was having none of it and spent more time on 2 legs than 4, next thing my cob reared in the trailer, sort of slid down and bent the partition over and the pin on the back bar snapped. At this point OH walked round the corner so i threw lead rope of mini at him and ran into trailer, cob settled down as soon as i got to his head and I backed him out. When we had all calmed down (and I had cancelled the teeth appointment) I lead my cob through the trailer a couple of times and he was fine. We then eventually managed to get the mini in the trailer, walked her through it twice and then I took the leadrope off and let her have a wander about in it and gave her some hay in there, with the ramps down, and she settled and was quite happy.

I know I did things wrong and should have loaded the cob after the mini, tied cob up tighter, given him a haynet while he waited etc. but i'm just feeling pretty defeated and like a crap owner.

Soo I am getting to a point, what would people advise, I am going to work on loading the mini, just getting her to walk through and used to it, any tips? she is not food orientated and she just rears as soon as you walk towards the ramp, it is the ramps that she is scared of as once in she doesn't like the ramp coming out.

I just feel so bad for my poor cob :(
 
Just read my post and wanted to clarify i'm not a complete idiot, really! lol.
I have had ponies/ had experience of ponies that are difficult to load but normally I can either bribe them or they just plant and can be persuaded to take steps forward.
I feel a bit down in general at moment (moving and stuff) so think that doesn't help.
 
You had a one off bad day. You ended it well by reloading both horses and finished on a good note. You're going to do more practice.

Don't beat yourself up, we all have bad days (I just had a bad dentist related day that involved me standing around on a lonely yard for an hour holding a horse in the pouring rain and sleet - for someone who didn't arrive :rolleyes:).
 
I'm sure you'll get loads of help with this from people more knowledgeable than me, but first of all, stop worrying and feeling upset. Nothing dreadful happened and most of us have had disasters loading (at least, I have!) Some years ago I had a TB mare who absolutely refused to load. She'd put one foot on the ramp then run backwards as fast as she could. I got a Richard Maxwell controller halter (there's loads of similar pressure type halters on the market) I schooled her on the ground so she understood that if she didn't keep with me, it would put pressure on her nose but as soon as she "gave" the pressure was released.

when I came to load her again, the whole yard came out to watch, much to my total embarrassment! After one run back, she stepped on the ramp and loaded perfectly. Needless to say the audience was very disappointed. I never had any problems after that and I've used it with other horses and it's always worked. The beauty of the pressure halter is that you can use it to teach horses to lead nicely, back up when asked etc.

Good luck!
 
Thank you both, I am being a bit emotional.

I might look into pressure halters as she is starting to be strong to handle and i would prefer to nip it in the bud.

I have only had her for a month or two and before that she lived in somebodies back garden :confused: I am laying ground rules with her so not her favourite person at the moment as she can't have it all her own way!
 
Firstly, don't beat yourself up about it! We all have off days and do things that make us feel like complete idiots who really should have known better.

Just get your trailer sorted and then practice with loading them both when there is no pressure to be anywhere. Take it carefully and load them one at a time, then both together in whatever order you fancy, change it around a bit if you can so whoever goes first usually sometimes goes last and you (and the neddies) will be feeling more confident and happy before you know it.
 
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