We Need to do Better, (Horse) Peoplee!

According to Google, we have been loading horses in horse trailers for almost 100 years. Yet this cartoon exists, and furthermore, we find it funny.

If you don’t believe that trailer loading is an issue in the horse world, go to any organized horse event, and show up about the time everyone is leaving to go back home and just watch and listen.

So we are GENERATIONS into this trailering-horses-thing, and it’s such a problem in our culture that we have a cartoon about it. Why is that? Not, why do we joke about it (a question still worth asking), but why is it still a problem? It’s not like some people haven’t figured it out. It’s not like those people aren’t willing to share what they have figured out with others. It’s not like a lot of this information isn’t available for free, on the internet, or for cheap in magazines and books. So why are we so resistant to learning how to get good at loading horses in trailers? We HAVE the solution to this (actually, we have multiple solutions), we just choose not to do it. I don’t know how else to think about it.

One of the things that’s going on with trailer loading is that we are very much laying in a bed we (as a community) are making. It is DEAD EASY to teach a young horse, who is nicely halter broke and who doesn’t know any different, to jump in a trailer and go down the road. Dead easy.

What’s hard, though, is to reteach trailer loading, which is mostly what we have to do. Most horses with trailer loading issues have been (accidentally, mostly, but with utter consistency) TAUGHT to not get in the trailer. Reteaching something that has been fully learned is always harder than teaching something new, because the horse has to UNlearn before he can RElearn. This takes time and expertise, which is what some folks lack. And here is the vicious circle we live in.

The fact of the matter is, this is something we COULD do if we would just do it, as a culture, as a community. We could do a better job on the front side of this, and we could do a better job on the backside of it. But the fact of the matter is, if it’s so pervasive that it fuels a cartoon, we probably already have the answer. It’s just not an answer we like (Do The Work).

Part II, what YOU can do about it.