Travelling Nervous Horses - quite long sorry!

[JosieSmith]

I am looking for some advice on travelling my nervous Arab. I haven't had her long but heard she used to be fine travelling, but went away one day and wouldn't load to come home. They spent hours trying and eventually had to pretty much beat her to get her in. She was never loaded again until I got her. She won't load on her own and with another horse she dances all the way and comes off sweating and we have trouble loading her to come home. However, there is one horse she will load and travel with with no problems at all. But this horse is leaving the yard. I want to take her to the pleasure rides but it would mean loading her onto the yard wagon with about 5 other horses and I'm terrified that she won't travel well. I have little experience with this sort of thing so wondered if anyone could give me any advice. She might load and travel fine, but she might not. Would it be worth trying to load her onto the yard wagon but if she won't load just leave it until we've had a lot of practice?

 

[Divasmum]

If you are able to then load her and feed her on there and then unload. Eventually build up to a very short (5 or 10 minute) journey with another horse and then take it from there.

 

[Mbronze]

Ditto the above ^^^^^^^^^^

Perhaps being loaded with more horses (who are settled?) may calm her further, if they don't fuss about then perhaps she will get the idea and not be stressed either.