To tie or not in the trailer

[Jennifer Hixson Layman <jlayman@leland.Stanford.EDU>]

Lysane,

This subject just recently came up for me as well.  I recently did a stupid
owner trick... where I pulled in from a training ride, and realized I had
left my lights on, on my other vehicle.  Parking my rig and running over to
turn off my other head lights broke my normal unloading routine and I
forgot to unhook my horse before unloading him from my straight load.  I
was fortunate because when I told Goose it was OK to unload he took that to
mean it is OK to unload.  No thrashing...  he just sat on his ass and
pulled until he broke free.  Fortunately for me he had on his biothane
which gave in three places.  If he had  had on his rope halter we would not
have been so lucky.

Anyway, I still tie!  Both my horses are small and wiggly.  They both can
bend their necks back wards and look out and I don't want them to get
wedged as happened to another ridecamper.  My trailer also has front
mangers and both of them can get their heads down to the floor infront of
their mangers to eat food they may have dropped.  I would hate to have them
grazing on the floor and then I make a sudden stop.  They are just way to
squirmy, but I am also much less forgetful about unhooking them.

I think alot of it depends on your past experiences and you current
circumstances (i.e. type of trailer, and personality/size of horse).

Jennifer Layman, Goose & Hoo
Palo Alto, CA

>Provided a horse is trained to load and unload properly and quietly,
>what would be the reason one would tie a horse in a trailer as
>opposed to not tieing (whether slant load or straight load)? What
>are opinions/experiences on this? I would prefer to leave a horse
>untied, but then I only have one horse at the moment. Perhaps this
>would be different if I was trailering more than one horse (?)
>Lysane