Saturday, September 23, 2017

Loaded!

Trailer loading lessons went well yesterday. Yes, Lessons plural, because Pistol got a lesson too to prepare him for hauling to his new home after weaning.
I started with Mesa (video is almost 9 minutes). Overall she took about 15 minutes to load and unload.



The new routine will be feeding them their foal ration in the trailer.



Then since that went well, it was Pistol's turn. He was a little more concerned and took a little longer, but he is pretty young and I thought he did pretty good, considering that this is the first thing he's had to do without having mama close by. This video is 7 minutes, it was taken after about 10 minutes of him thinking about whether or not he wanted to load. He wasn't bad, just reluctant until I put the butt rope on him.



Since he was concerned about his mama I had him eating at the back of the trailer so he'd feel less confined.



Both foals needed the butt rope to encourage them to step forward into the trailer. Today we shall see if it is needed- I hope not!
The goal is to eventually just send them in instead of leading them in.

4 comments:

Crystal said...

always nice to teach them young

Far Side of Fifty said...

Fun to watch you work them Shirley. You are right Pistol is a brat! But he finally did it. I bet Mesa is a star pupil in a couple of days:) Well done!

Linda said...

It's interesting that they're so cautious of it even at a young age. Smart! Why horses get into our death traps, ahem, trailers, I'll never know.

Shirley said...

Linda- that's why I'm using their feed, to give them a reason to want to go in there.