A photo taken by Harold Roy Miller of the horse prior to the can incident.
On Monday morning, March 26, 2012, we received a call of a wild horse in Stagecoach with its hoof stuck in a can. The caller had already determined that the can was not going to come off on its own, the horse was slightly lame and the Department of Agriculture had nobody free to send out. The caller felt that she could get the horses to enter her round corral by placing some hay in it and leaving the gate open.
A short while later we received a call that three of the mares, including the one wearing the can, were safely in the round corral.
We responded with Trailer 3, one of the trailers that carries portable corral panels. Not realizing how badly stuck this can was, we had hoped that we could construct a safe squeeze with a couple of panels and pry the can off with a stick. However once we arrived we found that we had a more serious condition to contend with.
Trailer 3 with corral panels.
We contacted the Department of Agriculture, explained the situation and got permission to take the mare over to the Northern Nevada Correctional Facility in Carson City where the mare could be put in the tilt table squeeze to get the can removed.
With three horses in a large round corral, we decided to set up a three panel loading chute. Two panels were set up as wings that were tied onto either side of the trailer. The third panel extended into the corral at a slight angle to serve as a cut-off panel and chute opening.
The panels set up.
Once the loading panels were tied fast and checked, it was a relatively simple task to herd the horses over to the cutoff panel. We let the other two horses double back out and we shut the gate on the mare with the can. At that point we gave her a few seconds to get her wits about her.
Letting the mare figure out the loading chute dimensions.
Once she settled and started looking inside the trailer, a little energy directed to her from outside the gate was enough to send her in.
All total it took about 5 minutes to set up the panels, about 30 seconds to get the mare in the chute, and another 30 seconds to let her settle and get her loaded. In these situations the horse needs enough time to check out the opening to the trailer and explore it visually, but not so much time that the horse either gets spooked or starts calculating how to escape the loading scenario.
We notified the Department of Corrections that we were on our way and Hank Curry and his crew from the Inmate Horse Training Program were waiting for us on our arrival.
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