Day 1 - Simon

TEACHING SIMON TO LOAD IN THE TRAILER

My first goal with Simon was to teach him to load in the trailer, so that I could bring him home for training.  I am not good at forcing a horse to load, so I teach basic left, right, forward and backward cues before I even tackle the task of the trailer.

Simon's owner demonstrated the lounging that she had done with him before I started.  Though Simon is a little pushy and overly confident around people, the work that Debbie has done with him helped our first lesson go a lot quicker.  He was a little resistant to cues in the beginning, which caused him to appear lazy, but that quickly changed with a presignal (ask), pressure (tell) and insist (tap) sequence in initiating a specific response. 

Simon's resistence to getting into the trailer was obviously baised on fear.  He was afraid the moving floor wouldn't support him and spent a lot of time pawing the trailer.  As long as his attention was focused on the trailer, I just left him alone to investigate.  When he did start stepping up with his fornt feet, I asked him to back out and step up several times before encouraging him to walk in farther.  I wanted Simon to be comfortable with getting out of the trailer as much as getting in, and it is easier for me to teach one or two feet to back out at a time.  Once the horses is all the way in the trailer, it is usually scarier for them to back out if they haven't already learned to step down.  At one point when Simon was half way in, he layed down on the floor. 

Simon learns quickly, though testy some now, doesn't seem to like a lot of conflict.  After a groundwork session, I ended up loading and unloading him in the trailer a number of times before picking up another horse that I was bringing home with him.  It was a good thing I did too because I didn't get very far down the road before I lost the power steering and brakes on my truck.  I ended up calling Debbie and she and Jimmy hooked up their trailer and came and got the horses and I.  I was so glad that I had taken the extra time teaching Simon to load because he now had to load into another trailer on the side of the road, and we didn't have very much time before it would be dark.  I put Beau in first and Simon walked right into the trailer after a momentary hesitation.  THANK GOD!  That situation could have turned out messy.