Nightmare when travelling!

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Sophie Kirkman

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I'm having a lot of trouble with my 17yo TB mare in the horsebox. She has had an accident in a lorry about 5 years ago but I'm not sure of the exact details, she just has a huge scar on her left hip. She will not travel in a lorry but recently she has also started to play up in the horsebox. When going around a corner she leans to the right and kicks violently. We have had various incidents with her when she will not stop kicking or get out the box even when it has stopped. Her most recent panic attack was the scariest: around a corner she started kicking and leaning, then fell. She kicked and struggled to get up and was terrified. We took my other horse out but she couldn't get up for some time, and we just let her lie still for a while. We eventually got her up and tried to close the partition again, but she tried to lean over again, so we had to take her out and send her home on foot.
We normally manage to get her to local shows without mishap, but we can't take her to away shows, and I'd love to because she's my best horse, jumping 1,20m at the moment.
Some people have suggested giving her equimote (an antidepressant) to calm her down, or putting her in a sling to stop her falling or even sedating her before traveling!
Does anyone have any ideas that could either help to keep her upright when she leans or to stop her kicking? And would any of the above suggestions work? Many thanks:)
 
If she is in a trailer try taking out the central partition and using a full length breast bar, make sure you cross tie her
 
Hi, dont know what sort of trailer you have but i had a similar problem with my horse when i had an Ifor Williams 505.

Changed trailer and now all fine.

I was told by a local trailer sales person that nervous travellers do not cope well with the IW's due to the suspension and general clanking.
I dont know if this is true for all nervous travellers but certainly change of trailer worked for me.
 
Are you travelling her on the left or the right? My mare could not travel on the left and would fall over. On the right, however, she is fine. I agree with the other person - take out the centre partition and let her find her own balance. Feed her in the trailer and just keep loading her and unloading her with treats when she has been good and get her in there as much as possible with good rewards. She has got to see the trailer as a nice place to be. Good luck!
 
Ok thanks will try taking out the centre partition but she normally travels with another horse so it will be a pain having to do two loads! She travels on the left bcos she leans to the right and kicks to the left and I'm scared that she'll kick my other horse if I put her in on the other side.
 
I think you have found your problem. Lots of horses cannot travel on the left. They need to be on the right due the camber of the road and when put on the left they easily loose their balance and when on the right they are fine. I have had three horses that couldn't travel on the left but were perfectly fine on the right. Have you tried travelling her on the right? If not, please give it a go.
 
I really think you need to travel her alone! If she's chucking herself about enough to fall over, she's putting your other horse at risk as well as herself.
 
It is a balance problem and the only cure is to take the partiton out and let her have the full space so she can stand at an angle. Cross tie her to prevent her turning right around.

When we designed our 9 horse lorries the horses trvelled on a herringbone basis with their bums to the driver but not all horses could travel this way and it was easy to switch a horse around so it could travel with its head to the driver instead and this would then cure the problem.
 
Lynette said:
It is a balance problem and the only cure is to take the partiton out and let her have the full space so she can stand at an angle. Cross tie her to prevent her turning right around
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Exactly this. Ive had two horses who travelled beautifully for years suddenly start doing this. They started leaning and seemingly losing balance with their legs trashing up the other side. They get worse and worse until eventually they end up hurling themselves to the floor, one of mine eventually got so bad he'd go down as soon as we closed the doors and hadn't even moved! By the way, with our second horse we learnt the reason he started going down was after one bad journey were the stupid garage had over-inflated our trailer tyres so it was obviously too bouncy for him. It only took that one journey as the trigger.

Either take the entire parition out, or do as I do - just take out the rear half of the partition (if your trailer lets you - Ifors and Batesons etc. allow this), then you can leave the front half in and the breast bar. This is enough for mine, they can still stand at a bit of an angle and can spread their hind legs right out. I have managed to travel another horse with my "faller" like this, obviously only do it if they know each other and aren't going to kick each other as their hindquarters can touch but Ive never had any probs. Youd think the faller, who spreads his legs out, will get caught up with the other horses legs but they dont. They just sort of figure it out amongst themselves!
 
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I recently had this problem with my mare, I have taken the partition out and now travel her cross tied. I have also discovered that one of the rear tyres had a slow puncture, which I have had repaired. Now she travels absolutely fine.
 
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