Trailer trouble. Disaster!!

[ThorlT92]

So today we tried to take the daughters second pony out to its first show, he is a 9 year old Welsh. He came out for his first outing on the trailer last week with our other pony to Somerford Park and was an absolute dream, however, today he decided he was going to be a pain. Loaded fine, was a bit worked up but we thought once we get moving he will settle. We drove the huge distance of 15ft when one of the other liveries shouted he had turned himself around. Within the time from getting out of the car to the back of the trailer he was over the top of the ramp and jumping through the gap between the ramp and the roof. Cleared it! Upon inspection, he has managed to clear the breast bar, turn around at the front and crawled under the breast bar the other side of the partition. I can solve the breastbar issue easily, but I don't like travelling with doors closed. Has anyone had a kind of mesh gate fitted between the top of the ramp and the roof? We have a ifor505. Any help and suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks, Tom.

 

[Tiddlypom]

I think that your only option is to shut the rear doors. Why don't you want to do this? I've never seen mesh inserts instead of rear top doors in an Ifor.

I'm also not sure how you can stop the pony jumping the breast bar again, once they've done it once it can be very hard to stop them doing it again.

I'm glad that your pony is ok. I've known of a pony turn round and jump out of a trailer before. Sadly the pony broke a leg and had to be PTS.

 

[Orangehorse]

Having the back doors closed is only like travelling in a lorry, it also means that if a large vehicle sits on your tail, the animal inside will not be frightened of it.

 

[MidChristmasCrisis]

Cross tie and close doors.

 

[Michen]

Teach the horse to travel quietly, back to basics and one step at a time.

 

[Tiddlypom]

Having the back doors closed is only like travelling in a lorry, it also means that if a large vehicle sits on your tail, the animal inside will not be frightened of it.

This. The people towing the pony in a trailer that I posted about above hadn't even realised that the pony had jumped out til they got home and opened up an empty trailer.

Pony was found on the road .

 

[ownedbyaconnie]

Teach the horse to travel quietly, back to basics and one step at a time.

This. I never “force” my horse to do anything. You could only clip my horse if sedated which I didn’t like. It didn’t seem fair that I could knock her out and do what I wanted despite her obvious fear. So she went a winter unclipped whilst I worked on getting her comfortable with being clipped. Now I can clip her with no sedation, no fear etc.

I wouldn’t be happy trapping/tying down my horse so she couldn’t escape the trailer. I would instead be finding someone calm and experienced in difficult travellers to help me help her. Or only travelling with another horse/in a box/whatever the horse is comfortable with.

But I know I can be a bit “hippy” in my way of keeping horses and it doesn’t suit everyone, just my opinion!

 

[LegOn]

I know someone who traveled in the trailer up and down their drive way in the box with the horse until they realised they werent going to die - buckets of feed and lots of voice reassurance helped.

Also a big sign something will go wrong is when they wont settle when loaded - usually moving off quickly isnt the answer, I would have loaded and unloaded a bunch of times until they realised they were fine!

Walk him in & out of a stationary box a hundred times until he is calm & then ask him to stand calmly in the box with lots of feed and encouragement and increase the length of time before unloading him again! Eventually he will realise its not a big deal!

 

[Green Bean]

Agree with the slow, peaceful approach and a few times up and down the road at the yard. You could also try adding a head partition as this may make the space too small to jump into, to turn around. My horse is very tense when alone in a trailer. She doesn't like noisy engines like motorbikes and trucks. I thought I would close the back doors so she couldn't 'see' them. It actually made it worse, she was a wreck when we arrived at our destination. I think she needed to see and process what the sounds were, but that won't work for all horses. I now give her a calming cookie or two at least half an hour before we are due to load to try and take the edge off. It doesn't always work if she is too worked up though.
Hope you find a solution