Retraining horse to balance in a trailer

[Hippoloosa]

Long story short, my horse used to travel great in a 505 with a partition in, on either side. He then had two horrible journeys where he completely lost the ability to balance and obviously was very upset about travelling after this. To the point where you’d load him and he’d try to collapse to the floor before the trailer moved. The root cause of this sudden change (back problem) has been solved and we are a year down the line now and he’s doing great and no issues in any other aspect of his life.

I’ve been travelling him without a partition and he’s totally fine with that. But when I’ve tried again with the partition in he scrambles turning left, loaded on the right hand side. I haven’t tried him on the other side yet. I have tried leaving the middle bit in and pinning the front and back back and using the full length bars and this definitely helped a lot.

Is there any chance of him relearning to balance with the full partition and short bars in? I would love to go back to taking a friend’s horse around with us.

Any advice welcome.

 

[PinkvSantaboots]

If his happy without the partition I wouldn't push it some just need the extra room I do think that trailers are narrow and some horses just can't cope with being penned in.

How big is he?

 

[Red-1]

I have found that usually this issue is due to a physical cause. I see the back issue is sorted, but wonder if the back issue was caused by another niggle, such as a hock?

If he travels well with the partition out, I would do that. If you need to travel with one in, I would do a performance work up (as opposed to a quick flex and trot) with the vet.

 

[EstherYoung]

My old boy went through a spell of this following a bad trip. After a couple of years getting his confidence back with the partition out, and then he ended up ok in the smaller trailer with the partition in if I had it in the normal place at the front and pinned back into the corner at the back (it was an older trailer with a single partition). That meant I could travel him with my Shetland.

Then when I wanted to start travelling him with other full sized horses I upgraded to a bigger trailer - got a 2x17.2 trailer for my 15 hander . This meant he had the same amount of space as when he had two thirds of the smaller trailer, plus extra headroom etc. And he was fine with that.

 

[sollimum]

I have found that usually this issue is due to a physical cause. I see the back issue is sorted, but wonder if the back issue was caused by another niggle, such as a hock?

If he travels well with the partition out, I would do that. If you need to travel with one in, I would do a performance work up (as opposed to a quick flex and trot) with the vet.

I agree with this - there may be another physical issue to rule out, it was the first sign that my cob had issues with his hocks. He either needs to keep the partition out or have a bigger trailer as EstherYoung has advised.

 

[Hippoloosa]

He has had everything x rayed and scanned and has been under the care of an expert vet physiotherapist. There isn’t anything else to check, really.