God knows, a good horse trailer isn’t cheap. A new two horse slant load Calico at Circle B trailers in Granbury is $3,800. That’s the cheapest good one I could find. But unless you want a nightmare on your hands, spend the money on a good trailer for your horse.
I’ll never forget when I first started trailering to rides, I was down at Bandera and a girl I was riding with told me she bought an old trailer for $900 because that’s all she could afford. She didn’t know to look under the trailer at the metal chassis to see if the metal was still strong and good. Going down the road at 60 mph the metal gave way and her horse went through the floor boards and had his hooves ground off to the fetlocks before she got stopped. It was a nightmare of suffering before she could get a vet there to put him down. Twelve years had passed since that had happened, and she still choked up as she told the story, but she insisted on telling it so it wouldn’t happen again.
That’s a story you don’t forget. And so, when it came time for me to own a trailer, you better believe I made sure it was in good shape. And whenever I haul, I have my trailer checked out all around. Tires, floorboards, chassis, electrical, everything. I also check out my trailer brakes, the blinkers, the brake lights and everything on my truck too.
So you can imagine my distress when an old shop-made horse trailer appeared at the ranch last month. It was painted a cheerful bright red to disguise the major metal fatigue and rust along its sides; it had crapped out bald tires, and a low metal bar structure over the horse’s head with no cover on it - a guaranteed injury to the poll if not a major headache. I looked underneath the trailer and there was duct tape holding the center pipe in place. New 2 x 6 boards covered the shabby chassis.
By the weekend I saw the owner had repaired the tires and I was loading his horse into it to go to a weekend trail ride. The horse had to duck his head to stand in it.
This horse I had once owned: he was a very nice Tennessee Walking Horse and he was no small boy. My neighbor and I went out there to plead not to haul in that thing.
The horse’s owner, who’ll I’ll call Jack, had his mind set on going to a trail ride in South Texas and argued with us that it was safe. Jack said he’d looked at the chassis when he’d changed the tires and it was fine. We knew it was not. He loaded up anyway and started to leave -- my neighbor actually blocked the truck with her body, she was so upset about the possibilities. Shouting ensued, the Sheriff arrived and he noticed the trailer didn’t have a license plate or sticker. He told him Jack it was not street legal. Jack turned around and went back to the barn. We sighed a sigh of relief.
After the Sheriff was gone, Jack left again, pulling out in a hurry. I saw the trailer trundling out of the ranch’s drive too late, the red backside of the walking horse bouncing around in it. I said a prayer for that horse. He needed it. Half hour later, I heard a noise and truck and trailer pulled in. I ran out and saw a huge hole in the floor board. Half a 2 x 6 was splintered and gone. There was a piece of plywood covering the hole. I noticed the top of the horse's hoof was scraped off and he had a puncture wound in his fetlock. Fortunately Jack had only been on the back roads, not the highway, when the floor gave way and the horse went through to the pavement. And fortunately, a car behind him kept honking at him and Jack was able to stop quickly. Had not all that been in place, the horse would have been severely injured.
I helped clean up the puncture wound and put the horse in a paddock. The top part of his hoof was ground off about a half inch into the coronet band, but he wasn’t limping so it seemed he had escaped the bullet.
I didn’t say anything to Jack, who immediately left for the ride with his girlfriend without the horse and trailer. I examined the trailer and well - you can see for yourself from the photos the story.
That horse could have been so easily killed in that trailer. Just for want of a 20 minute delay that put the driver on a country road not the highway when the accident happened, is that horse alive. And the Tennessee Walker? He won't be loaded into that thing again. I bought it from Jack so it will only haul trash to the dump.
Bad trailers abound. Take care of your horses.
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