Fixed It

I think I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to fix with Trask is his trailer loading. He is normally fairly good about following you into the trailer, but oftentimes (especially at shows) he likes to put his front feet in and then refuse to budge. Super fun when you just want to go home.

I think self-loading is a really important skill for all horses so I wanted Trask to learn too. It's a lot safer and just a generally good life skill. I've been putting off teaching him this for no reason, though it's more difficult now that the days are so short and I can't exactly practice it in the dark.

Since he goes home soon, I sucked it up and finally put in the work on getting him to self load. I'm really proud of him for figuring it out, especially since half way through working with him I thought it was going to be a bust and I had failed.

Trask is a funny horse. He's very smart and not generally a spooky or reactive horse. But, when he doesn't understand or doesn't like something, he tends to freak out and his brain just stops working and he panics for no reason. He understands pressure, both from the halter and from tapping with a whip. He just can't process it when he's freaking out.

After trying to send him into the trailer multiple times, we kept getting hung up on putting the front feet in the trailer, but he wouldn't put his back feet in. Tapping his butt resulted in him kicking out at the whip, then rearing and rocketing out of the trailer backwards. Obviously not the smartest thing to do, and it resulted in him scraping a good amount of hair off his face when he reared and backed out at the same time (he's very talented).

I was sure we were done at that point. His poor head hurt (luckily didn't need stitches), he wasn't listening to me, just trying to run me over and rear. I was pretty sure I wasn't making any positive progress, so we changed tactics.

Trask is very food motivated. I use this to my advantage since he's a panicky horse, the treats help him refocus and have a positive association. I don't use treats with all horses and I don't use them all the time with Trask.

Now, I led him into the trailer. He stopped again with his front feet in and I tapped him on the shoulder with the whip. Eventually he stepped in the trailer and I gave him a handful of treats, lots of praise, and we just hung out for a while and got lots of pets.

Then I led him in again and repeated the treats and praise. One more time and he seemed to start to understand. The next time I went to lead him in and as he got his front feet in, I stopped and let himself get all the way in. Treats and repeat.

This was the end result:


We did it a few more times, sometimes with treats, sometimes without. He also learned to wait until I asked him to turn around. We will do this again to make sure it's cemented in his little pea brain, but he's a self loading horse now!