More Loading Practice

Still resisting the urge to put a rug on him, but don't want to spoil him...

Over the last few days I have been taking Titch for walks with our dogs and on his own, and getting him happy about loading onto the trailer. He has been really happy to load with all doors open.  He always has his breakfast in there. Yesterday I closed the back door up and he was fine. Today I put his 'travel boots' on, closed the front divider, loaded him and closed the back door.  He managed to turn himself around in that space to look backwards.  He couldn't work out how to turn around again and any other horse would have panicked, but I managed to fling the rope from his head collar over his head and lead him to a bit where there was more space and turned him around.  Phew! Once he was facing forward again I closed the front door too and he was fine, but I immediately went around and opened it again and unloaded him, whereupon he ate grass.  Good boy!

First time standing in trailer with both front and back doors closed and front partition in place

I did a bit of rug training with him in the field, but I think the fact that he had so much space to escape worked against me. I circled him many times dragging a rug on the ground.  At first he turned away from me, but when he realised I was just circling him he settled...until I got a bit nearer.  So I repeated the circling until he was ignoring me and eating grass again. When I went to lift the rug up even slightly towards his shoulder though he moved away, so I changed it to just my hand stroking his shoulder - fine with that. Here I ran out of time.  So at least I had ended on a good note.  Maybe I need to go back to touching him with smaller pieces of material in the stable till he is soooo bored of it, then try again in a bigger space.