Everyone knows a horse who won’t load. It’s a common problem for horses because it’s actually quite a big ask – we’re asking herd-bound open-space animals to load into a small, rattling, moving box, often on their own. But they CAN learn to love it, if it’s trained positively.
This video shows Revel, a rescued pony at Hope Pastures rescue centre ( http://www.hopepastures.org/), learning to enjoy loading into a trailer. The most important parts of making this a positive process are:
1. Giving your horse choice and never forcing him onto the trailer or box.
2. Making going towards and into the trailer rewarding for your horse.
3. Going at your horse’s pace, which means paying attention to his emotional threshold and taking it slowly.
You can see all these in action with Revel and she ends up not actually wanting to leave the box – a sign of good training! In fact, the 3 of us here at CT often say that getting the horse to tolerate the behaviour isn’t enough – you want your horse to LOVE it!
Watch the video see Revel learn to love loading onto a trailer:
For more info on Hope Pastures rescue centre, click here (http://www.hopepastures.org/)
To see Revel’s training in full and loads of other step-by-step videos on loading, check out our Loading and Travelling Home Study Course (https://connectiontraining.com/home-study-courses/loading-and-traveling-home-study-course/). It teaches you everything you need to know from training your horse to go into the box, to closing them in and moving off calmly to teaching your horse to be relaxed unloading in strange places and loading again to come home. There’s much more to loading and travelling than just getting them in…!
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