Sometimes it’s unfortunate that as the author of this blog, I often decide what I would like to focus on for the week based on trends of note in the large animal emergency situations that I track worldwide. I say “unfortunate” because that usually means that somewhere, somehow, something horrific has happened to a horse–and usually more than once–hence a “trend.” That is the situation this week as people are getting their horses back on trailers to enjoy the spring riding season. Perhaps your trailer hasn’t been checked for serviceability or maintained as well as it should have?

How it Starts:

I called my farrier, Stephen Marshall here in Georgia, on Monday to discuss an appointment for him to trim my horses. During the conversation he mentioned that he was called last week to assist with two horses that had gone through the floor of a trailer and were trapped there. The horses had been driven at least three miles before the driver realized what had happened and stopped the trailer.

I asked him for more details, and he related that the floor of the trailer was absolutely not appropriate for anything living to be transported in, especially because the floor boards were not attached. Nothing held them to the frame of the trailer except their weight–which of course when the trailer went over a bump, they popped up and the horse went through