The Trailer Training Plan
Last week a hole appeared in Minnie’s training, and in all honesty I knew it was there, but I hadn’t met it head on in a couple of years. When there are a couple of small holes in a horses understanding with their partner there are ways to back burner the issue, or to do a work around, and that is how I had been handling this issue. We had been focused on learning other things that were important, such as balance and partner communication. Work arounds can be messy and frustrating. You know the issue is there and you are getting though the moment in the best way possible. In the case of a horse that doesn’t like getting on a trailer, the messy part is when you are leaving a show, a million “experts” are milling around watching the fiasco and judging how you are handling it. You just want to get the hell out of there. That is the worst possible scenario for doing your trailer training. Last year when we were trailering quite a bit Minnie would get on the trailer to go to the show pretty readily. It was leaving the show where the hole showed up more distinctly.
When we were coming back from the last show last spring I was following the trailer, which has an opening above the ramp, so i could see what Minnie was doing on the whole ride back. I was disturbed to she that she did not settle in and did not touch her hay. She had company on this particular trip, but that was not a comfort to her. Her head was up for the whole hour and a half, looking around and whinnying. Toward the end she started stomping. She was clearly not happy with the trailer ride. However, she was not panicked, just pissed off. When she was 7 months old she was trailered from Texas to Vermont. My feeling is that she worries that any ride on a trailer could be indefinite. So she objects to the whole experience.
Last week when we went to for our Miller Canyon Ride, it was a very short trailer ride and she has only had a couple of those in her life. Most have been a couple hours or much much more - several days.
When I ask Minnie to do something, in most cases she is willing, but she does have an opinion about the idea. I don’t want her to ever lose the ability to express her opinion, and feel it is hopeless to try to express herself. So there is a fine line when I comes to a safety issue, where I need her to get on a trailer in an emergency - whether she thinks it is a good idea or not.
Yesterday we did our first session of the plan. My friend Wayne had set up his trailer next to one of the paddocks that has his young horses in it, and he put a flake of hay in it. He lives about a 10 minute ride from the barn. I tacked up Minnie, leaving her halter on and carrying a 15 foot lead rope. I put her bridle over the halter. There are a couple of “nervous spots” on our ride over where she wanted to stop, look ahead and evaluate. That is fine with me, I don’t rush her through those spots. I let her take a minute to check things out because I want her to use her brain. She can smell and hear things I can’t, and I would rather she know if there are deer and javelina lingering in the area. I listened and evaluated as well, then gave her a rub on the neck, asked her to move on.
As we approached Wayne’s house she was pretty nervous, there was a lot for her brain to process. Three barking dogs, several horses, a house, barn, vehicles and the dreaded trailer. I sent her a mental image of all the horses, dogs and people milling around at the shows last year and said, “It’s just like being at the show, you can handle this”. She settled, lowered her head and stood quietly for me to get off.
I untacked her and walked her around for a minute while the dogs and other horses settled down. Then we went over to the trailer. I walked on and let the rope out so that there was no pressure on her. I fluffed up the hay and put a piece of carrot on top of it. She walked right in and started eating.
I was prepared to be there for hours. I wasn’t in a hurry, I brought water and a snack! I applied no pressure and she had walked right on.
After she had a few minutes of finding the piece of carrot and munching hay in the trailer I turned her around and took her back off. We walked a couple of circles behind the trailer, then I pointed her in and she walked on by herself and resumed eating. I got on the trailer and was hanging out with her while she ate for a few minutes. Then something weird happened. She stopped eating, and gave me a long look, then she showed me something. She stepped with the point of her hind foot - on tip toe like a ballerina - like she would step if she was feeling her way backwards to back out. The trailer floor made a weird noise. Then she did a rapid little dance with her hind feet on tip toe. Tap, tap, tap, tap. She was showing me how she is worried about backing off a trailer and that doing it freaks her out. So I asked her to stop and come forward a step. I stroked her neck for a minute while thinking about what she had shown me. Then I turned her around and walked her out.
Enough for one day. We had two immediate, quiet and successful loadings. And a discovery of what worries her, then freaks her out. Our next session we will work on backing calmly and slowly. We will work on her trust of me asking her to back up over a little bridge and other obstacles she can’t see that make a strange noise when we are outside the trailer, then in the trailer.
So we are breaking down the problem, she showed me her worry when she did her tap dance. I am so glad she trusted that I would listen to her concern, so we can work on the problem together. In all honesty, I would have trouble trusting my footing if someone was backing me out of a step up trailer and I couldn’t see where I was putting my feet. It would feel like backing off a cliff. I will also look for a berm to back off of and maybe take a walk down to the wash and work on backing down the steep parts.
We can fix this Minnie, we can both get more comfortable with stepping into the unknown.
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