Connor and the New Trailer

Connor has been in a step up before, his breeder has one, but it's been at least six or seven years since he'd been in one.  With a couple of trips coming up later this week, I wanted to make sure he was cool with the new trailer.

I needn't have worried...

"Wow this is pretty great!"

One thing I learned with the KieferBuilt is that this chicken of a horse takes his cues from me.  If I walked into the KB like I meant it, so did he - and he went right in.  If I walked up to it tentatively, so did he - and he wouldn't go in.

"Well played, horse, well played."

With the Shadow, we walked up to it casually to check it out and sniff it all over, then I hopped into it like I meant it, and he hopped right in with me.

I'm not one to haul with the windows down, but for getting him comfortable with the trailer, it was great.

When he got in the first time, he learned the trailer is an amazing place where the cookies never end, and we repeated that a whole bunch of times (although maybe with fewer cookies).  He never even hesitated even though it's a decent sized step for his stubby legs.

Slant loads, especially one horse slants with big doors that latch open on the outside, require a whole different safety protocol than the two horse straight with escape doors did.  When I have two people later this week, we're going to work on self loading, which is pretty much a necessity now.  But for just getting him comfortable in it tonight, I didn't mind getting in with him.

By myself, I worked on teaching him we only go off of it head first, since he can so easily turn around in this, and reinforcing our already-installed "stay where I put you" command ("Wait") and our "you're good to get off the trailer now" command ("Okay!").

Which we did...

...over...

...and over...

...and over...

.
..until he was incredibly bored.

Fit-wise, I could not be happier.  He had so much room back there, much more than I thought he would from visualizing it in my head. 

So much room for activities!

All in all, super happy with how he handled it and how he fits in it, and I can't wait for our first real haul on Friday!