Shopsmith Forums

First let me say I am not in the know about horses. I had a couple of uncles who were into horses, one did logging with a horse or team to pull the logs to places a truck could pick them up. The other uncle used them on the farm and wintered ridding horses. So if and when I got to ride it was bare back on work horse....... and a few times on a real riding type horse.

My Mom loved to ride, having done a lot of that in her younger years. Some of those years in Montana.

By the time I was old enough to get into riding the uncles were no longer in the horse era. To expensive to own or rent for us my brief exposure was done.

So today I was out for my 10,000 steps and visited several places including one that has horse riding trails. To be honest it rare I ever see a horse there but today was an exception. The horse was having none of the getting back in the trailer. I was there for at least 45 minutes maybe an hour and it was a stand-off. I didn't watch the whole time but what ever they tried wasn't working.

Somehow they had to have gotten the horse in the trailer to get it there but for what ever reason getting it back in was now working. Oh did I mention it was raining??

They had some sort of hood they tried but the horse seemed to know where it was and despite walking in circles it knew when ever they lead it towards the trailer.

So do horses not like trailers? Did it just want to spend more time out on the trails before going home? What is up with this situation and how does one solve it? Just a general discussion would be nice.

Ed

Some horses like some people are just stupid. You saw one of them.

LOL

I am by no means a expert however I did help a friend several years who raised race horses ,loading and unloading was what I did to help ,,I remember one that wouldnt load until I put a carrot in my back pocket and then would follow me around any where , because some one trained it that way ,,, we have friends who work teams as of right now ,was at the mill today and a 5 year old about 3 ft tall at the top of his hat was resting ,,,hiding,,,,, from his dad on ,,,behind,,,the front leg of a belgian that stood over 6ft at the shoulders ,, the horse looked like it was enjoying the company , you could see the bond between them ,,the horse responded to voice commands from any one of the boys working there ,,, just like a well trained retriever,,,, horses seem to have a memory that rivals most humans, once they have had a bad experience with some thing they tend to avoid any thing to do with it . pretty much like people,they also seem to remember good things ,,, there is a good chance the horse was miss handled by the owner or maybe previous owner .maybe it had a bad experience with a trailer , maybe the way some of these people drive ,maybe it had a encounter with the horse next to it or was left in a trailer with out water in the heat,,,
You can speculate for a long time as to why the horse didnt want to load but at one time be assured it had a bad experience in or loading in a trailer.