Reader: I have a 5 year old Mustang gelding. He rides well but at times, like when trying to load him in the trailer, he will turn his head away from me, push his shoulder into the lead rope and take off. Trying to hold on will nine times out of 10 leave me with rope burns and he gets away anyway. He has figured out how to get away and does it a lot. What can I do?
Charles: This is a very good question. In the past months, I’ve done several articles on trailer loading. To solve this problem you need to learn how to block your horse’s escape route that it has mastered. It will take a lot of savvy and persistence on your part to overcome this problem and you may need to enlist help from a professional horse trainer.
To solve this problem, we must review some basics when we are trailer loading. A horse can go in six different directions: right, left, front, rear and up and down. Before I teach a horse to load into a trailer, there are a few different exercises I do with the horse so that I gain control of the horse’s feet. To get more details on these exercises see my book, Starting Baby Jaz and read the chapter titled Month 8, Jaz Learns to Trailer Load. To begin:
1. I teach the horse the go forward cue.
2. Next, I teach the horse to go forward over objects in the arena in a controlled environment. I may start with something simple like getting a horse to cross over one pole.
3. When the horse is comfortable with one pole, I add another pole.
4. I up the ante and step-up the horse’s emotions by introducing an object that may make the horse feel uncomfortable like a plastic tarp. This develops a mind set in the horse that he can go over something. I use a 6’ x 8’ tarp and fold it up until it is about 12” wide and 8’ long and ask the horse to go over the folded tarp.
5. As the horse gets more comfortable with this exercise in both directions, I gradually start opening up the tarp to make the exercise more difficult.
6. Next, I would teach the horse to go over plywood. I recommend the wood be at least 3/4” thick so that the horse doesn’t break the wood and put his foot through it. This exercise teaches the horse to get used to the noise of his hooves on wood.
In addition I teach the horse:
• Change of directions, which is an exercise we do quite often here at the ranch.
• Shoulder control, in other words, when I step towards his shoulder he steps away and knows to do this on both sides.
• The back up cue.
I do all these exercises until the horse responds to each cue lightly. This does not mean he has to be 100 percent perfect but at least 90 percent. Then I do the following trailer loading exercise. Before you begin this exercise, make sure you make your trailer inviting and open (I talked about this in an earlier series of articles). Open all the windows if your trailer has them, don’t over-clean your horse trailer, and leave a little of its manure in there to make it smell more inviting.
Now I have said earlier that a horse can go six different directions, so when you first ask your horse to go forward into the trailer, it may back up. Most people allow the horse to back up and then circle the horse around and lead it up to the trailer again. I recommend if the horse backs up, you ask it to go forward with the go forward cue. If the horse goes at least a couple of steps or considers going in by sniffing the trailer you release the pressure for a few seconds (30 to 40 seconds) to recognize its effort. If it takes its foot up into the trailer that is acceptable so release the pressure. You continue asking for more until it is in the trailer.
Your horse may try to avoid going into the trailer by going between you and the trailer, knocking you down. If you have done the preliminary, pre-training work this shouldn’t happen. But I have had horses that try to come over the top of me no matter what preliminary training I have done. What you have to do and be willing to do is to block the shoulder when it moves toward you by tapping the horse on the neck with the dressage stick or horseman’s cane to stop the movement. The horse may try doing this two or three times; each time you must block the movement.
The horse may also try to turn away from you and go to the right, which has happened to you. The horse takes his nose to the right so that it gains leverage and then pulls away. Now to counteract this problem, you need to do all the preliminary exercises I have talked about, then put a cowboy halter with a 12’ lead on your horse and gloves and try loading him into the trailer. The minute your horse evens thinks about turning his head to the right away from you bump the line and keep giving the go forward cue.
The horse may also try to rear up. To correct this behavior, use a dressage stick below the horse’s knees every time he goes up in the air.
Once you close all the escape doors, the only direction it can go is forward into the trailer. I have picked up horses that you couldn’t even get 30 feet from the trailer. After working with them for 20 minutes, so far in the last five years, I have had them in the trailer in less than four minutes. The preliminary training you have done allows you to control your horse’s space and feet; then you control its mind and become its leader.
Another way to load your horse into the trailer is by putting a 12’or 14’ lead on it and lunge it into the back of the trailer. When I do this I lunge the horse right and then left near the back of the trailer and every time I stop the horse it must stop facing the trailer. If it tries to move off in a different direction, I send the horse back out and do the change of direction exercise for another five minutes; then I stop the horse and give it an opportunity to stand and look at the trailer. This technique is successful but out of a 100 times training a horse to trailer load, I have only used it once.
Being persistent, consistent and following through always wins. If you are not, your horse will never go in the trailer.
As always, if you have any questions, please visit me online at www.charleswilhelm.com.

God Bless,

Charles Wilhelm
It’s Never Ever the Horse’s Fault