7th August, 2012 Damned if you do

Yesterday morning I went out to an intermittent loader - well really an intermittent non-loader in that once every two years she starts to go on strike about loading. The annoying thing for her owner is that when I go out to them, even though I am only watching to see what is going on between them, the horse always loads. Why would that be? We wondered whether the horse could have reached the stage after four visits over five years that whenever she sees me she knows is only practising? It seems a bit of a leap for a horse to do that but nevertheless we loaded her again and actually took her out in the lorry; she travels really well and her owner drives carefully. At the other end of the journey she unloaded and loaded again within seconds. It's difficult to work on a problem when the horse doesn't demonstrate the behaviour complained of. It's also hard to identify the key to the problem.

Because they go out regularly in the horse box for a pleasure ride or to ride back home, the owner doesn't practice in between so the horse always knows that there is going to be work involved and hard work at that. Although she seems to enjoy being ridden, like many of us, we'd perhaps rather stay in bed in the first place and the actual travelling always adds to the workload. It may be that when they are due to go somewhere the owner is more tense, especially as she is now anticipating problems with the horse. So practising would help the owner as well as the horse.

There's also an element of attitude. There's a feeling that the horse ought to load and perhaps it might, but an air of disappointment and no real incentive, isn't going to make the horse want to go up the ramp. Once in she gets a couple of treats and they're off. Not much in the way of wages. I'd want to make the horse box into a veritable hotel; a pleasant association every time so I'd be feeding in there on a regular basis and perhaps buying in a bit of haylage for journey itself.