Heeding: Basic Trailer Training

The thing you never do is force the horse into the trailer. You don't want to make any part of your training program scary to the horse. You just stay at the shoulder and calmly walk into the trailer. Loading a horse in a trailer is not an accomplishment. You don't need to do anything loud when you load a horse into a trailer. It is just having your horse on your heeding aids so completely that he goes with you anywhere. So if your horse does not want to go into a trailer, you need to go back and sharpen your heeding and bring up the trailer question again later.

Fine tune your step cue by going back to the stage of reinforcing what you ask with an aid, if necessary. Walk forward and reinforce the message that the horse is to step with you by tapping its hindquarters with a whip. Stop by turning your body parallel to the horse's body and blocking its chest with the whip, emphasizing the side that matches the forward front foot. Do a LOT of backing, controlling each stride. Get accuracy. Get only the stride you ask for and no more or less. It is accuracy that makes the horse heed you into the trailer. If you don't get accuracy you will get disobedience.

Remember that if the horse does not enter the trailer, it does not necessarily mean that he is disobeying your step cue. He may not quite understand heeding well enough yet. You may need to go back and work more with basic heeding to confirm your cue.

Don't get bossy. Accuracy comes from doing the same thing over and over, not the same thing louder and louder. Use repetition, not retribution. To get the horse in the trailer, you apply consistent directional pressures in a relaxed, rhythmic way. You don't let those pressures get louder and louder or faster and faster.

Everybody wants to see you shake a ladder and crack a whip and put a horse in a trailer in little under a second. That may impress an ignorant audience but it's a negative learning experience for the horse. With really good training, the horse obeys, follows, and stays in the trailer not from fear but from trust. When you create a fight with a horse about something, the fight will become bigger and bigger every time. So it will get harder and harder to load the horse into the trailer. It's a longer and slower process in the beginning to get the horse to respect your step cue and earn its trust. But once you earn trust, you have it for life. In fact, once you have shown a trusting horse that the trailer is safe the first time you load it, it will usually walk right in the next time.

A trailer is just another piece of equipment in the training process and should be introduced with rhythm and relaxation. You introduce the saddle in stages and another piece of new equipment like a trailer should be approached the same way. If the horse is uncertain but paying attention to you, just keep going back to where everything is calm until the place where everything is calm gets closer and closer to the trailer. Do things in front of the trailer that are calm like picking up the horse's feet or doing some grooming. DO NOT hurry. Every time you feel the excitement level rising or feel yourself losing control, go back to something the horse understands how to do well to establish control and calm again.

Some horses may walk right in the trailer with you the first time. Some you may need to coax and cuddle a bit. You don't need to get the horse in the trailer the first day. The process may take weeks. Remember that if the horse does not get in the trailer on the first day, you have NOT taught him that he doesn't have to get in. Horse's don't think like that. They will remember the last thing that happened. So, on the second day, he will remember the spot behind the trailer where he still felt comfortable and you can take up where you left off.