8/ AUGUST 2019 THE RIDER MY SPIN:


her to get on the trailer. This mare is sensi- tive so it doesn’t take much. I never have had to do that again. I mean never. And that’s the point!


Step On, Step Off


as the horse rushes out of the trailer. I like a horse to stand at the opening of the trailer and wait for me to cue the horse to step off the trailer. I cue the horse by stepping off the trailer myself first.


In this next photo, you can see


that Cleo the horse is standing at the opening of the trailer. I hope you can see that I am not


holding her at the end of the trailer opening. I am not preventing her from


to stand there with me. I repeat this over and over again.


However many times it takes. The horse soons learns that there is no point to walk off on their own. It’s great practise for trailer load-


ing as well! Once the horse is standing there


quietly waiting for me to cue the horse to unload, I step down off the trailer first.


This is a good safety feature. By


stepping off and to the side, I can make sure that I’m not going to get run over should the horse decide to unload willy nilly. This mare would never do that


of course. In this last photo, you can see


By Susan Dahl. This is a really good example of how


I like a horse to load and unload onto a trailer.


This is just the way I like to do it. I have a note about the photos in this


article. I’ve done up a little video on my


youtube channel: reinersuehorsemanship to show how I like to load and unload a horse.


I have this mare for sale and had


friends film the video when I was at an- other location recently so that is why the mare has a saddle on. I normally don’t load a horse with a


saddle unless I’m going a very short dis- tance.


I really do like to change it up for my


horses so that they are really broke to all kinds of situations.


About Loading... No fuss. No refusals. Who’s got time


to wait and deal with a lot of nonsense! In the first image you can see that the horse is just walking immediately up to the opening of the trailer. In other words, I don’t stop right at the opening of the trailer and do some prayer or pre-load shenana- gins. I don’t give the horse a chance to re- fuse. It’s one fluid motion onto the trailer.


In the second photo, the mare is


loading onto the trailer. She is just walking straight on. No hesitation. It’s what she’s used too. When I first bought her back a little over a year ago, she would refuse to go into the trailer. That is a common prob- lem. I fix that problem by making her do work right in front of the trailer like sev- eral hard rollbacks on the longe line. And I give her a swat on the butt while I order


A Story About Loading Problems... I had a student (many years ago) who


said she typically counted on at least 1 half hour of loading time into her riding sched- ule. Wow. Boggles the mind. I once had customers who came to


ride my trails and obstacles at my old Durham farm, who provided a great learn- ing experience for me. I had heard that some people put up with taking HOURS to load and unload their horse. I finally saw how it’s done.


This lady was trying to load her horse.


We’ll call her LadyA. I can’t remember her name and it doesn’t matter anyway. Another lady was the driver of the truck and trailer. We’ll call her LadyB. I arrived on the scene to find LadyB


already flustered as LadyA had already been trying to load her horse for well over a half hour. And LadyB knew they were going to be there a long time. I was fascinated. I had heard of these


things but I had not witnessed it myself. I also knew from past experience that people don’t want to believe how easy it is to teach a horse to load quickly and keep it that way. So I don’t offer to help as their frus-


tration that leads to angry quickly gets di- rected my way. It was a beautiful summer day so I had


sat on an outside bench not far from the ac- tion. I also wanted to be there in case there was trouble and LadyA needed help. LadyB decided to join me as she knew it was going to be a long wait. And it was! She also told me that she waited 2


hours for LadyA to load the horse onto the trailer in preparation for coming to my farm to ride. I offered to get refreshments but


LadyB declined. I’m not trying to ridicule this lady as it was no joking manner. The horse would not load and she was


having no end of trouble. I feel sorry for these people. I had heard from other people that it


had taken the fun out of having a horse and many people have gotten out of horses for this reason. We sat there for over an hour. In the


end, out of sheer nagging on the part of LadyA, the horse just finally gave up and loaded onto the trailer.


Unloading a Horse From a Trailer... The one thing I really don’t like about unloading a horse and that’s being run over


Erin Horse Day Shows Appreciation


preciation to the Erin Agricultural Society for their partnership, hosting the Cowboy Breakfast and for the use of the excellent fa- cilities at the Erin Fairgrounds in con- junction with Horse Day Erin and OXC Race, Horse Day Erin committee members make a presentation to the EAS at the July meeting. Ontario Extreme


Cowboy- Erin (Karen Dallimore)


Equine Erin (Bridget Ryan) made a mone- tary donation to the Erin Agricultural So- ciety in recognition of their role towards hosting a successful event June 8 & 9, 2019 in Erin. A por- tion of the money do- nated is to be directed towards the EAS Building Accessibility project.


Shown at right are: Eileen Brown, Secre- tary, EAS Karen Dallimore, OXC -E rin Rod Perry, President, EAS


and In a show of ap-


walking off that trailer before I’ve had a chance to cue her to do so. It’s not my job. It’s hers. If the horse should walk off the trailer on her own, I sim- ply turn her immediately around and load her onto the trailer. I turn her around and reposition her at the end of the trailer and ask her


that this mare is unloading calmly and beside me. When the horse unloads, I im-


mediately walk forward. No stopping at the end of the trailer opening, just like when I load the horse. The opening of the trailer is to


teach the horse to walk on or off, not to dilly dally. Why would a horse want to go


onto a trailer if at the opening of the trailer, it’s the best place to be. Make sense?


Now That We’re Off The Trailer.. You can see that I like to have


my horses calmly walk straight onto and off the trailer without hanging out around the opening. I believe this is a great way to do


it and with this mare for sale, I wanted perspective buyers to see how well she load and unloads since we know that that can be a big problem with horses (as the story I mentioned in this arti- cle).


May you always have an easy loading horse!


Putting my spin on trailer loading. Reinersue


@KISS reiners


About Susan Dahl Susan Dahl, ORHA/NRHA past


multiple champion, writer, blogger, author and clinician, retired certified professional horse trainer. Owner of Foundation Reining Training Centre in Durham, ON. She specializes in ef- fective horsemanship, and reining. For more information on her


services: judging, clinics or resale horses, please contact her on face- book, her website: www.reinersue- horsemanship.com


or reinersue@hotmail.com


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