Trailering Your Horse

A practical guide to using reward-based training techniques to create a true partnership with your horse. This leads to lifelong connection, effective problem-solving and joyful performance.

Trailers are a fact of life in the horse world. Sooner or later, everyone who owns a horse will have to deal with a horse trailer in order to haul to shows, races, hunts, and perhaps even to veterinary clinics. Up to now, when horse owners wanted information on trailers they had to rely on magazine articles or word-of-mouth recommendations. Not anymore. The Complete Guide to Buying, Maintaining, and Servicing a Horse Trailer is the first and only book for both owners and buyers of horse trailers. It's a resource that gives prospective buyers, faced with hundreds of models to choose from, the means to make the right choice. It's a manual that gives current owners information on maintaining and caring for their trailers. Foremost, they will learn from lifelong horsewoman Neva Scheve and Thomas G. Scheve, both respected industry insiders, that the safety and comfort of the horse should always be the primary concern. This authoritative book, with more than 175 illustrations, addresses a number of important topics, including how to: * Determine whether to buy a new or a used trailer. * Ask the right questions of the dealer or owner. * Weigh the options and select the best model for your needs. * Evaluate tow vehicles and hitches. * Master pre-trip preparations. * Care for your current trailer. * Load, drive, and use a trailer safely. * Deal with typical exterior, interior, electrical and mechanical problems. * Assess the work of repairmen if the job is more than you can handle. "Complete" is not just an idle word: this book has an appendix that gives the names and addresses of the major trailer manufacturers to contact for literature. In all, the Scheves have given horse owners everything they need to make an informed purchasing decision that will benefit themselves and their horses.

Properly trailering your horse is an essential skill every horse owner needs to master. With clear text and detailed photography, Cherry Hill shows you how to choose an appropriate truck and trailer combination; train your horse to confidently enter and exit the trailer; and drive safely while pulling a loaded trailer. With tips on emergency equipment and caring for your horse en route, this guide has everything you need to know to create a safe and stress-free traveling experience for you and your horse.

How do you train a horse to get in and out of a trailer safely and calmly? With the renowned trailer-training method taught by the late Dr. Edwin Goodwin, long-time equine professor at the University of Maryland, it's simple. In Trailer Training Your Horse, journalist and equine enthusiast Laura Harrison McBride brings to publication for the first time the lessons and advice of Dr. Goodwin. The step-by-step training technique works quickly on green horses, it works fairly quickly on older horses that have already been led; and it works a bit more slowly on horse that have have negative trailering experiences. Most important, it works, almost without fail, and it can help your horse overcome fear, stubbornness, bad training, and bad handling. To accompany the training, you'll learn how to choose the right trailer, as well as how to prepare your horse for the trip and what supplies you need to make the trip as comfortable and stress-free as possible.

Begging your horse to enter the trailer is frustrating at best. Forcing your horse into the trailer is dangerous. And, unfortunately, you can't just leave the little bugger there at the fairgrounds, so you're stuck. Who needs the aggravation? The next time you're running late for a show and the kids are driving you nuts and you need to get your horse boxed up and you're running really late... wouldn't you love to have a pro horse trainer appear and show you what to do? Well, the bad news is, I'll be twenty states away that day. The good news is... you can bring my book! Trailer training is actually very easy - it's just a matter of knowing what steps to take, how long to do each, and what to emphasize. To that end, I've compiled a simple set of instructions, a guidebook to getting your horse loading smoothly using the proven methods of John Lyons. Train your horse to: - Load immediately and willingly - Unload easily and in a controlled manner - Lead politely You'll find the book broken down into five "Days" or segments: - Day 1: Easy trailer loading begins by solidifying great ground manners - Day 2: Refine your control over specific body parts, gaining respect along the way, setting yourself up for success - Day 3: Two different ways to get your horse into the trailer - Day 4: Exercises for "hard-luck" cases, training tips for everybody - Day 5: Do's, Don'ts and What-To-Do-Ifs, plus notes on tying, horses that won't unload, horses who "thrash" and more And... learn to use a round pen to teach your horse to actually look for open trailers! You point, and your horse runs over and hops in! I call them "days" but you should take this work at your own speed. Each chapter gives you a plan, a goal, theory and homework. Some segments, or "days," will be easier than others. And, while you can breeze through everything in hours, you might want to split it up over days or weeks. It's completely up to you. Whatcha waiting for? Don't wait till the morning you're leaving to find out if your horse loads!

Each book in the Horse Illustrated® Simple Solutions series zeroes in on a common problem faced by horse owners and is the perfect fast-reading source of answers for every horse lover. For example, how do you best match your tow vehicle and your horse transport requirements to the many options available in horse trailers? What is the best technique to use when your horse does not want to walk into the trailer? Problems like this and many are solved in this new series!Horse owners need a ton of knowledge and tools to keep hayseed-size problems from ballooning into haystack-size ones. Each book in the Horse Illustrated® Simple Solutions series zeroes in on a common problem faced by horse owners and is the perfect fast-reading source of answers for every horse lover.

Begging your horse to enter the trailer is frustrating at best. Forcing your horse into the trailer is dangerous. And, unfortunately, you can't just leave the little bugger there at the fairgrounds, so you're stuck. Who needs the aggravation? The next time you're running late for a show and the kids are driving you nuts and you need to get your horse boxed up and you're running really late... wouldn't you love to have a pro horse trainer appear and show you what to do? Well, the bad news is, I'll be twenty states away that day. The good news is... you can bring my book! Trailer training is actually very easy - it's just a matter of knowing what steps to take, how long to do each, and what to emphasize. To that end, I've compiled a simple set of instructions, a guidebook to getting your horse loading smoothly using the proven methods of John Lyons. Train your horse to: - Load immediately and willingly - Unload easily and in a controlled manner - Lead politely You'll find the book broken down into five "Days" or segments: - Day 1: Easy trailer loading begins by solidifying great ground manners - Day 2: Refine your control over specific body parts, gaining respect along the way, setting yourself up for success - Day 3: Two different ways to get your horse into the trailer - Day 4: Exercises for "hard-luck" cases, training tips for everybody - Day 5: Do's, Don'ts and What-To-Do-Ifs, plus notes on tying, horses that won't unload, horses who "thrash" and more - And... learn to use a round pen to teach your horse to actually look for open trailers! You point, and your horse runs over and hops in! I call them "days" but you should take this work at your own speed. Each chapter gives you a plan, a goal, theory and homework. Some segments, or "days," will be easier than others. And, while you can breeze through everything in hours, you might want to split it up over days or weeks. It's completely up to you. Whatcha waiting for? Don't wait till the morning you're leaving to find out if your horse loads!

An intensely moving memoir of a young man who left heartbreak in Maine to seek healing Out West in the company of horses. Growing up in a small Maine town, Chris Lombard had never ridden a horse—never even touched one. But on one fateful night, as what he’d thought was a happy twenty-something life full of love and possibility fell suddenly apart, he met two horses and looked into their eyes. What he saw inspired him to leave everything he had, and everything he didn’t have, behind, and go in search of what was missing. With the little he needed packed in his ten-year-old Pontiac Grand Prix, and little more to go on than a belief that someone would give him a chance, Chris headed west to find work on a horse ranch. His journey took him first to the mountains of Colorado, then the Hollywood Hills of California, and finally, the wild borderlands of Southern Arizona. The settings changed but the same lessons came in quiet moments, movingly captured in these pages: watching horses, reaching out to them, swinging upon their backs. Chris learned new meanings for words—presence, connection, softness, and balance—the elements of good horsemanship feeding a deep hunger he didn’t know he had. But learning to ride a horse, learning to communicate with him, to teach him things, these required qualities Chris was only beginning to cultivate. Human nature plans; it pushes and it rushes. And it would take a terrible accident to awaken a whole new awareness for time and space, and Chris's place within it, beside a horse. In the austere beauty of the Sonora Desert, Chris met a cowboy whose intense love for life on the back of a horse held a deep sadness at bay, but only for so long. Their brief time together, working land and livestock, would bring Chris to the realization that the richly fulfilling new life he’d found held all the answers he sought, but only if he could ultimately leave it behind. Evocatively written, interweaving the author’s growing understanding of horses and how we connect with them with his deeply personal experiences, Land of the Horses brings to life a young man’s transformation alongside the horses, people, and dramatic landscapes of the American West. Healing heartbreak, falling and getting back on, searching for something true—this is a story that is in all of us. And it shows we are all capable of creating the life we truly want to live.