Gideon and I made the 3 hour trek from Madison to Tupelo. The entire drive up I fought images of him falling through the floor or something equally as bad. My friend, Randa, greeted us at the show with a smile and a wave. I was relieved my horse and I survived the drive, and I got out of the truck to give Randa a big hug. After our greeting it was time to show her my new horse! When unloading a horse from the trailer, the safest way is to untie him before you open the back door. That way if the horse decides to get out in a hurry he doesn’t take the horse trailer with him. I went to Gideon’s head and untied him and Randa went to the back and opened the door for us. I tugged on Gid’s lead rope to ask him to walk backwards. His feet didn’t budge. I tugged a little more. No movement. Gideon would not back up. To make it even worse, we weren’t backing out of a normal horse trailer that’s the length of 1 horse. We had to back all the way out of a 2 horse long trailer. As we begged, pleaded, yelled, tugged, pulled, jerked, pushed, and everything else, the other people just walked by and gawked. If they didn’t gawk they did the complete opposite and avoided eye contact. About 30 minutes into this ordeal I was furious. I was not upset with my horse, but at the people who were not helping. This was my very first English show. Until this point I had always ridden western, and competed in western shows. If I had been at a western show, I would have had a group of 20 people surrounding us and figuring out how to make it happen. Instead it was up to me, and Randa offered a hand when she wasn’t showing her horse. If this is what those English people were like, I wanted nothing to do with them! For an hour I did everything that I knew to get Gideon out of the trailer and none of it was working. It was obvious he was accustomed to turning around and walking head first out of the trailer. Backing through the long ugly thing was not his idea of a good time.
We had to back alllll the way out
I’ve heard the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Like I said I tried everything I knew and it was not working. Finally I had the idea of attaching a lead rope on either side of his halter, and standing behind him like I was driving him – a lead rope in each hand. I stood behind him and gave the lead ropes a gentle tug towards me. Gideon took a step backwards. I tugged a little more and he continued to step back. Out of the trailer we came! I have no idea why that method worked, but I did it several times until he finally grew comfortable with backing out of a trailer like a normal horse.
Now that he was out of the trailer, maybe we’ll actually get to show! We’ll see…
Lesson of the day: Don’t be insane. If it’s not working, try something new.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Sarah
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