Horse trailers badly - suggestions?

[Ange]

We have a mare at our farm who is DESTRUCTIVE in a trailer. She is fairly territorial by nature, and when in a trailer with a buddy she will destroy the trailer. She has kicked the back hard enough to kick her shoes off, bent the butt bar 4 times, and bent the center divider (she jumps up and flings herself sideways). She does this all while contently munching hay. She does it some when trailering by herself, but much worse when trailering with a buddy. She needs to learn to trailer with a buddy, any ideas how we can explain it to her?

[Ange]

bump

[MaresNest]

Mostly just posting to give you another bump. I don't know what I would do with a horse like this, and am glad that I don't have the problem. :no:

That said, one obvious strategy is to tranq her. Have you tried that? Then there's always the old "stand in the trailer doing pleasant things", which generally means eating. But you say she's already eating while kicking. Some might suggest hobbling her, but personally I would NEVER do that in a trailering situation. (In point of fact, I've never hobbled a horse for any reason at all.) Do you have a solid divider or an open one? I would be strongly inclined towards a solid one with a horse like this. But if you've already got one, maybe try the other.

Like I said, this is mostly a bump post. Good luck.

[arabhorse2]

Maybe it's the confining nature of your trailer that she objects to.

Have you tried transporting her in a stock trailer? If she's good in a stock, it's probably the type of trailer you have.

Other than that, I have no advice. Casper and Cloud both transport like dreams regardless of the type of trailer, and Conny was always ready to get on and go somewhere.

Mack's hard to get on the trailer, but once he's on, he's good as gold.

[Go Fish]

This may sound extreme and it's definately a risk. But odds are she is going to, at some point, seriously injure herself anyway.

Load her by herself. Find a deserted road. Everytime she starts to kick, slam on the brakes. You don't have to be going very fast as you don't want to jackknife the trailer. But you have to cause the mare to scramble a bit to regain her balance. The point is to punish her for the behavior and make her think of standing up instead of kicking the crap out of your trailer. I think there is a downside to this method...a really smart horse may not want to load if the trailer ride is going to be uncomfortable. However, I don't this this is the case with your mare. She makes the trailer ride uncomfortable all on her own and still loads everytime.

I had a western trainer who cured a stallion with this method. He kicked so hard one time that the back door was flung open. It really can be quite dangerous.

Good luck.

[mjrtango93]

This may sound extreme and it's definately a risk. But odds are she is going to, at some point, seriously injure herself anyway.

Load her by herself. Find a deserted road. Everytime she starts to kick, slam on the brakes. You don't have to be going very fast as you don't want to jackknife the trailer. But you have to cause the mare to scramble a bit to regain her balance. The point is to punish her for the behavior and make her think of standing up instead of kicking the crap out of your trailer. I think there is a downside to this method...a really smart horse may not want to load if the trailer ride is going to be uncomfortable. However, I don't this this is the case with your mare. She makes the trailer ride uncomfortable all on her own and still loads everytime.

I had a western trainer who cured a stallion with this method. He kicked so hard one time that the back door was flung open. It really can be quite dangerous.

Good luck.

We had to do this with a horse as well. Naughty little crap head off the track. Got his leg over the divider hauling by himself one day and we had enough of his antics. Wrapped him up, loaded him, found a not well maintained gravel road and whenever he kicked we either drove fast (so it was stupidly bumpy) or would slam on the breaks (we were going like 10mph) to make him stand up and stop the non-sense. Took about 15 minutes, of sudden stop, or acceleration and some speed down a bumpy road and he called uncle. Had a couple scrapes when we got him home, but he deserved every one of them. He was good for about a year and we had to repeat the process. When we sold him all you had to do was tap the breaks and he would plant all 4 if he was being stupid, the other horses in the trailer barely even noticed it.

[cyndi]

I used this exact method to cure my horse who would paw violently in the trailer whenever it was stopped - I mean, the entire trailer would shake.

At stop lights, I would stop at least several car lengths ahead of person in front of me - when the pawing started, I would roll foward, then slam on the brakes....she would stop pawing....and when/if she started again, lather, rinse, repeat.

It worked.

[Ange]

This is actually one of my assistant trainer's horse. Not that that really matters..

I think it's a territorial issue. She kicks when we lead other horses near her stall. She trailers better if she's alone, which complicates the "hitting the brakes" technique. I don't really want to put an innocent horse through that.

The divider -- trailer came with a full divider, she bent that in her antics (she throws herself sideways), so we put up a half divider. She bent the half divider on Friday.