Loading Your Horse

North Carolina has seen its fair share of hurricanes, flooding and fires in the last few years.  Owning horses may mean needing to quickly evacuate in an emergency.  We have talked about preparedness in other blogs, but making a plan is the first step and will help you think things through if you do face an emergency.  During Hurricane Florence, horse owners had to make decisions if they were going to shelter in place or evacuate.  Due to the overwhelming amount of rain and the following floods, some people who had previously been ok during other hurricanes had to make quick decisions on what to do.  

An important factor in evacuating is can your horse load and unload in a timely manner.  A horse that won’t load is very stressful on everyone.  Loading is not a normal horse behavior and must be trained.  The younger you train your horse the better.  It is a job that requires lots of patience on your part and understanding horse behavior.  Train horses to load in different types of trailers, to load on different sides and in the front or rear of a trailer.  The more the horse has the chance to vary its riding position, the easier it will be to load and ride in any trailer.  Sometimes horses need to be untrained from bad hauling habits which may be extremely difficult to overcome.  The horse could have multiple reasons to not want to load and you have to figure out how to overcome those problems.  Also give the horse time to learn to load and unload and not expect too much too quick.  Positive experiences will decrease problems in the future.

Make sure your horse is wearing a properly fitting halter. Lead your horse onto the trailer using a lead rope and never wrap the rope around your hand – keep it loose. When the horse is in the trailer, secure your horse with a quick release snap tie or slip knot.  It is critical that you can release a horse quickly if there is an emergency.  After loaded, make sure all partitions are closed including the butt bar.  Also practice unloading your horse, so they can calmly back out of the trailer

Other things to consider for emergencies, do you have enough trailer space to evacuate all your equine friends?  Will it take multiple loads?  Can you borrow a trailer?  Where are you going to evacuate to? 

ExtensionHorses has a 9 part video series from experts at Purdue University on safely loading and unloading a horse from a trailer.  

Video from the Eyes of the Horse

 Video on Loading you Buddy