As a small animal transporter myself, this topic always comes to mind when we often hear of the horror stories f what can, and a lot of times, does go wrong when daily, people put the trust of others in charge of their animals on the road for long distances and multiple days at a time. So when the same happens with horse transport, I have to wonder what different people expect and require when sending their horse off in the hands of strange people to take them state to state. What kind of qualifications and references and business expectations do others look for when hiring equine transporters. And does it vary with the discipline of the horse and owners? Do we trust in the people selling the horse or passing the horse along for training, or whatever the case may be? Do we expect less of a transporter coming from kill uyer lots or auction lots versus a High end jumper or reining horse? And the bigger question, that I am obably leading up to is, if you choose to have 2 separate transporters hauling your horse, and the transporters are meeting to pass the horse to the next guy, do you require them to know what they’re doing to safely transfer the animal from one trailer to another? Or do we just assume that they know how to handle each individual rse in any parking lot or barnlot to make sure the horse is safe?
In the small animal transport world, we too y times hear about transporters carelessly meeting othe r transporters to exchange dogs, as one person may not be going as far as another may be going .A lot of this happens with rescue animals mostly. Volunteers will pick up different legs of the route to keep cost of transport down for adopters or even if animals are going adoption site to adoption site. When in strange places and areas, around strange people, going vehicle to vehicle, dogs and cats tend to panic and get scaredand sometimes bolt, and with a lot of luck, can be caught, but again, it’s a strange place and things are scary.
So lets imagine for a minute, doing this with a horse! A horse htt hasn’t been handled much, around people that may or may not have experience with horses like them or with the attitude or personality they may tend to have. Horses are big strong creatures, we all know this. What they say goes. And there’s even occasions that I think we can speak for our own horses when we say they may also take advantage of someone they don’t know to test their limits.
Recently close to my own home, in Kentucky, a transporter, that has been left unknown to the public, was transporting a BLM mustang .At the time the horse was believed to be a stallion, just for us all to be proven wrong later when we learned it was a mare. The horse was resportedly headed to Ohio and at some point, for some reason ,they were said to have been meeting another transport company. So they chose a parking lot off of a busy interstate exit to off load the horse, and put into another trailer. Yes, I know, you have so many questions….. we all did, and most of them probably wont be answered! But at what point did any experienced horse person, on either side of the transport or even during transport think that that was a smart, safe idea? Without needing to say much, you can imagine a county filled with literally every breed and discipline was horrified to know that somewhere along a highway, in a High residential area, now resides a beautiful none the less, wild mustang, in hopes that maybe if the horse is lucky ,will be caught and get to a safe place.
So now I keep wondering , why and how do we get to a point where regulations and rules of transport are limited? Experience is becoming more and more limited. Perhaps it’s the same as it is in the small animal industry as well, and there is simply a lack of people that work for the groups we are required to register and monitor what is occuring on the road ,much less who is doing the hauling. Or perhaps it’s a matter of owners, adopters, sellers ,breeders, not caring either. Just as long as they’re not the ones doing the driving and care and the animals are out of their hands, we just assume someone in business as a hauler is doing the right things. And then ehave to start questioning the requirements of the person that not only chose the transporter, but wonder what their requirements of a transporter really is.
My personal opinion of “qualified”, well, its probably a long list. But again, as a transporter, I think that all hauling contracts, if those are being followed ,should have a clause in them stating that if a shipper, owner, breeder, what have you is not comfortable or satisfied when a transporter shows up and they feel like the truck ,trailer o any ther equipment isn’t up to par, or even if they ont like how the hauler handles their animals, they should be able to cancel on the spot without much of a financial loss. This not only would hopefully push a transporter to improve change what may be wrong .But it also helps others in the future be able to determine if they’re comfortable putting their own horse in those same hands.
Another, wha I feel should be a thing that owners should be doing is ing able to have a conversation with haulers. Be able to talk to the person taking responsibility for a sensitive animal. I get that we don’t always have time to talk to every potential client and a lot of people waste my own time on the phone asking a lot of questions and getting to know me, only to change their minds when they hear a cost…..a quick overview of how I transport, a quote, dates and how the process works, and then once I feel confident that they understand how everything goes, I offer more time with them on the phone or even extensive emails or text messages answering any and all questions and allowing them to acknowledge that I am a safe qualified choice. Are we sending horses off with strangers and not knowing what the plan may be in certain situations?
Id like some more opinions on this topic too. The topic of qualified transporters that is. The topic of hauling, that will continue to be a subject of interest and curiousity as to whether or not many people in the horse industry expect the same level of horsemanship on the road as they do in the barn!
In case you were still wondering about the mustang that brought the wild west to a quiet yet civilizedcounty in the middle ofKentucky ,the transporters that failed the potentially fire breathing animal by expecting it to transfer trailer to trailer, they left the are pretty soon after the horse escaped. Without much care on what to do or what could possibly happen next, as a result of these actions. Rumor has it, the horse wasn’t going to have the best of fate anyway. The mare was eventually safely caught by the grace of mazing horsemen and was placed in an appropriate and experienced home. Perhaps one day, I will follow up with an update on this black beauty and the new life it leads too!
