Feature


Soon Chase decides he can do it and walks through the trailer


so I empathise with him but I also let him know that there’s still an issue we have to deal with.


Soon Chase decides he can do it after all and walks into the trailer. I walk with him the whole way through and then we go around again and repeat it. Chase gets a little less worried every time and the fact that I’m not forcing him to stay in there, or shutting up all the ramps straight away, is building his confidence. I think the mistake a lot of owners make is that they don’t look at the bigger picture. They only practise loading when they need to go somewhere and the moment the horse is in, they close up the ramps and off they go.


I ask him to walk through the trailer several times to ensure he’s comfortable with it


Chase needs to come and do this kind of work twice a day, every day.


Gradually this can be built up to short journeys until he’s chilled out about it all.


Challenge Chase


With Chase now walking in happily each time, I make the exercise a little harder by loading him with the front partition across and asking him to stand in the trailer for a moment or two. Chase is quite happy with this, so the next step is to put the middle partition back, so he has a narrower space to load into. At first he didn’t like this,


so it was important to go back a step and widen it up again. This is essential with any problem. If there’s resistance, go back to one of the easier stages to keep building confidence.


The final stage was asking Chase to load himself, so this time I stood at the bottom of the ramp and asked him to take himself in. He was a bit confused at first, but soon got the idea. At the end of the session there was no hesitation and Chase was loading himself each time, even with the middle partition in place. However, it’s essential to remember that this lesson needs reinforcing. If Chase was my horse I would simply


The final challenge- Chase starts to load himself


repeat this lesson twice a day for a few weeks and then start to incorporate short journeys. If, at any point, Chase showed reluctance, then I would move back to an earlier lesson, for example, and forget the short journeys for a while.


Chase is tired from the mental challenges of the loading lesson


Remember, patience is the key. If


you’re angry your horse will pick up on this and


Repeat this lesson twice a day for a few weeks and then start to incorporate short journeys.


probably not load at all.


Chase standing in the trailer for a moment with the front bar across


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