Best Horse Trailer

Many injuries to horses occur when tied up, especially to trailers.  The “fight-or-flight” response of horses means you need to give some thought to tying up your horse to a trailer.

Horses by nature are used to having large areas in which to roam. Tying up prevents a horse from easily exercising it’s flight response, and can cause a horse some stress.

This response can be very easily triggered:

• Someone walking unexpectedly around the side of the trailer
• Dropping something inside the trailer
• Getting the halter rope caught on a trailer obstacle or it’s own legs
• Another horse encroaching on its space
• An insect bite

Both the fight response, typified by rearing up, or the flight response, can result in severe injuries to your horse. When rearing, the horse may hurt itself on sharp edges on the trailer, or get a leg caught in the trailer structure, which can result in a breakage.

Tips

• If possible, don’t tie up your horse at the trailer!
  Trailers are generally a hazard zone for horses. Fixed yards, portable yards and electric-fenced enclosures all offer your horse a lot more freedom to move around and a lot less chance of injury. Even a tree, if it’s clear of potential obstacles, is preferable.

• Never tie up using the reins of the bridle, or to the bit in any way. If the horse struggles it could severely injure it’s mouth.

• Tie a thin rope, such as baling twine, into a loop at the fixing point, and tie the halter rope to that.
  If your horse has a panic attack, it can break the twine, rather than injuring itself thrashing around the trailer.
  As per jenny_c‘s comment below, occasionally you may need to “hard” tie the rope in the interest of people safety, or when close to a busy road.

• Tie up on a trailer side or back with plenty of clear room for your horse to move from one position to another.

• Use a tie-up point located at chest height or higher. This helps to prevent your horse from getting it’s feet tangled in the rope.

• Leave only enough rope length so that it doesn’t drag on the ground, again so that there’s less chance of entanglement. But don’t leave it so short the horse can’t move it’s head around naturally.

• Never leave a horse tied to the outside of a trailer whilst unattended.

• Don’t tie a horse to the outside of a trailer when it is unhitched from the towing vehicle. A panicked horse is quite capable of dragging an unhitched trailer behind it!

If you have any other suggestions or tips, please add them in the comments below!