Trailer Loading

Yesterday I hauled Little John out to my dad's to borrow his round pen. Little John had only ever been in a trailer once before, for his 7 hour trip home from Saskatoon. He loaded up pretty easily his first time, but yesterday he was not quite so trusting of the trailer. He doesn't flip out, spin around or back up. He just plants his feet and won't move. So I had to think out my game plan to get him in without too much struggle. I tried the whole lunging him and using the lunge whip to encourage forward movement to get him in, but that just started causing his emotional state to escalate and him wanting to back up and resist. So I decided to try a different approach, the simple approach of me hopping into the trailer and tugging and kissing to him. For every step forward he'd take I'd praise him, let him stand and sniff things out. Pretty soon he had one foot in, then both front feet and then he hopped right in. It took 1/2 an hour total to get him in, but it just goes to show that taking your time, having some patience and staying calm is the best way to get things done. Player loads perfectly, but I know if I were having issues with him he'd respond better to using the lunge whip behind him to get him loaded. Every horse is different! And Little John and Player have very different emotional states and personalities.

He got to stay overnight at my dad's as I'm going to work with him some more today there, and we are going to have a fun trailer session as well (in and out, in and out until he's progessed to loading up easily).

We had some great weather yesterday! Round penning was a bit of a bust, as the snow is up to LJ's knees and me trying to run around in it was exhausting LOL Here's what we were dealing with:

Yeah, not that fun. So I rode him instead! First ride since November and he acted like a broke old pony. What a great horse I have!

Today I'll be attempting some HGS training challenges with him, so there will be videos in my next post :)