Teach your horse to load

Recently a client called to make an appointment for her horse at the hospital.
When the day arrived and the appointment time came and went I grew worried and gave her a call. It seems that in attempting to load the horse a real emergency had developed and she needed me to come to her barn because the horse had become so agitated when he was being loaded that he reared and split his head open. I arrived at the farm cleaned up the blood and stitched up his head. The horse was going to be fine-I wasn’t sure about the owner. She was very upset. It turns out that she had never trailer the horse before and had assumed because when he arrived at the barn and unloaded so calmly that he would be an easy loader. That couldn’t have been further from the truth! The client decided that she needed to teach all of her horses how to load and that is just what she did.
It is extremely important to work with your horse so that loading and unloading becomes a normal event. Get help from someone who has experience loading and unloading horses and teach your horse that the trailer isn’t a horrible monster. It may take a few hours to achieve this, but it is worth it in the end. You don’t want a routine event to turn into a battle that can endanger you or your horse.