Trailering Your Horse

Endurance riders often call endurance trips, Endurance Driving.  Most races are not held in our hometowns. They're often in the next county, or more frequently several states aways!  California is a rather large state, so I didn't need to leave it vey often to compete, but I rarely attended an endurance event that was closer than two hours to my home.  It was quite common for me to drive three to six hours on Friday afternoon in order to arrive at base camp with time to check in with the ride manager and present my horse for the pre-race vet check.

I nearly always traveled to endurance rides alone.  I would often meet up with a friend who was expecting me, and I would phone my husband and let him know when I had arrived at camp.  But essentially, the traveling was always just me alone.  Hauling a twenty-seven foot trailer with live cargo over steep mountains and through heavy freeway traffic can be a daunting experience.  Doing it alone, even more so.  But I realized that if I didn't "master" the art of hauling, I wasn't going to go anywhere!

Now that I am showing, my endurance hauling experience is proving to be very beneficial.  While I haven't traveled nearly as far for showing, it's still nice to feel confident about the hauling experience as I drive to a show, park, and unload.  Feeling confident about the hauling part eases some of the stresses and nervousness that showing can cause.

And so ...  This is the start of yet another series of posts.  I have several others going as well: Riding Figures, Endurance Photos, Gizmos, and My Horses (the story of each horse I've owned).  And of course in between those posts are other posts about my training and showing experiences, vet and health issues, and other random horsey things that inspire me.

The first two posts in this series were written before I realized that a series was in the works.  The first was about trailer maintenance, or rather, how my husband fixed my trailer's flat tire.  You'll find that one here.  The second was a short video showing how Speedy self-loads onto the trailer.  You'll find that one here.  

Heading across the desert with no traffic - easy driving!

To make this post actually about trailering your horse, my first bit of advice for the novice driver is this: if you don't actually get in the driver's seat and practice, you'll never get good at it.  

• Drive around with an empty trailer.  
• Drive somewhere you feel comfortable going.  
• Remember that you're bigger than most everyone else and they will move out of your way.  
• Don't worry about holding up traffic.  A ten second delay isn't going to kill the other driver.  If you rush however, it might.  
• Look in your side mirrors - A LOT!
• Bumper pull trailers follow in the truck's tires, but gooseneck trailers cheat to the inside.  It's like haunches in (trailer cuts inside the truck's tire tracks) which means you need to take the turns WIDE.
• Taker your time, don't let traffic rush you, and remember to breathe.

And one last piece of advice: If you want your horse to load quickly and quietly, do it a lot.  It may seem time consuming to do regular practices, but it's nice to know that on show day your horse loading in the trailer is not going to be one of your stressors.  It's also better to practice loading when it's not an emergency.  If you have to get to the vet quickly, or if there is some other type of emergency that requires evacuation, it will be safer for your horse to load quietly rather than having to fight him to get in.

So ... practice driving, practice loading, and get traveling!

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