EllieBeast
Well-Known Member
Hi, I have a 5yo appy x tb mare who I have owned since she was a yearling.
I have an ifor Williams 505 trailer.
The horse always loaded fine up until Feb last year when I travelled her to the forest with her field mate and the other mare was aggressive to her on the way There. My mare ended up with bruises and cuts to her face.
It then took us 5hours to load my mare to get her home, we eventually had to take the other horse back and remove all partitions (replacing with full length breast and breach bars.) It still took a further hour once the partitions were out. Pretty stressful by all accounts!!
She has since been very hit and miss about loading. Sometimes she loads within 30seconds, other times (like today....) it can take over an hour. She does always go on in the end, I have never given up in that sense. I do also sporadically take the trailer up and practice loading without actually going anywhere.
She is not at all stroppy or aggressive about it. She will place both front feet on the rramp and then plant. There is no rearing, barging or kicking involved.
Once she is on board she is totally calm, has never sweated up whilst travelling and happily munches her haylage for the whole journey, never rushes off at the other end and is a pleasure to take out. I always travel her alone now with no partitions.
Her reaction to anyone or anything going behind her is to just reverse off completely. She does respond to a food bribe but obviously not well enough!!
In july I had a team of natural horsemanship professionals to come out to help. They were very nice people but their methods really didn't suit my horse. She was very wary of one of them, and the whole session ended with a horse who had pressure sores on her face from the rope halter, was terrified of standing on the box and bolted off at great speed squashing it's handler and falling to her knees injuring herself in the process. These people came very highly recommended and I know their methods have worked very well in the past for others but clearly not for mine.
It took me a LOT of hours to get her happy on the box again, just me and her. And like I have mentioned sometimes she walks on in no time but she is shaping up to be really quite a nice horse and I'm desperate to be able to get her out and about more.
My next step is to borrow a 510 trailer and see if the extra space helps- again with partitions taken out. I will be doing this next weekend but I need another plan incase that doesn't work. Please don't suggest a lorry as I really don't have the money to change my setup that much, plus I would need to take another driving test. I can't see a 3.5t being any different and the only time I have tried her on one of those she didn't go in at all. Plus I can't afford one!!
I have tried every trick in the book with this horse, I am not a novice and have always managed to help others with tricky loaders in the past!! she has a real stubborn streak at times and is very intelligent which doesn't help!!
Does anyone have any recommendations for someone who may be able to help me? I'm very wary of making the situation worse again like last time!! I am really hoping that a bigger box will help but am open to suggestions. This really is zapping the fun out of it for me at the moment!!!
Sorry for the epic post but I didn't want to drip feed information !!
I have an ifor Williams 505 trailer.
The horse always loaded fine up until Feb last year when I travelled her to the forest with her field mate and the other mare was aggressive to her on the way There. My mare ended up with bruises and cuts to her face.
It then took us 5hours to load my mare to get her home, we eventually had to take the other horse back and remove all partitions (replacing with full length breast and breach bars.) It still took a further hour once the partitions were out. Pretty stressful by all accounts!!
She has since been very hit and miss about loading. Sometimes she loads within 30seconds, other times (like today....) it can take over an hour. She does always go on in the end, I have never given up in that sense. I do also sporadically take the trailer up and practice loading without actually going anywhere.
She is not at all stroppy or aggressive about it. She will place both front feet on the rramp and then plant. There is no rearing, barging or kicking involved.
Once she is on board she is totally calm, has never sweated up whilst travelling and happily munches her haylage for the whole journey, never rushes off at the other end and is a pleasure to take out. I always travel her alone now with no partitions.
Her reaction to anyone or anything going behind her is to just reverse off completely. She does respond to a food bribe but obviously not well enough!!
In july I had a team of natural horsemanship professionals to come out to help. They were very nice people but their methods really didn't suit my horse. She was very wary of one of them, and the whole session ended with a horse who had pressure sores on her face from the rope halter, was terrified of standing on the box and bolted off at great speed squashing it's handler and falling to her knees injuring herself in the process. These people came very highly recommended and I know their methods have worked very well in the past for others but clearly not for mine.
It took me a LOT of hours to get her happy on the box again, just me and her. And like I have mentioned sometimes she walks on in no time but she is shaping up to be really quite a nice horse and I'm desperate to be able to get her out and about more.
My next step is to borrow a 510 trailer and see if the extra space helps- again with partitions taken out. I will be doing this next weekend but I need another plan incase that doesn't work. Please don't suggest a lorry as I really don't have the money to change my setup that much, plus I would need to take another driving test. I can't see a 3.5t being any different and the only time I have tried her on one of those she didn't go in at all. Plus I can't afford one!!
I have tried every trick in the book with this horse, I am not a novice and have always managed to help others with tricky loaders in the past!! she has a real stubborn streak at times and is very intelligent which doesn't help!!
Does anyone have any recommendations for someone who may be able to help me? I'm very wary of making the situation worse again like last time!! I am really hoping that a bigger box will help but am open to suggestions. This really is zapping the fun out of it for me at the moment!!!
Sorry for the epic post but I didn't want to drip feed information !!