Then one day, for no apparent or particular reason we can find, Beamer decided he didn't like riding in the trailer. Specifically, he did not like making left hand turns. One day on the way to Westernaires we were making a left hand turn and we felt all kinds of stomping in the trailer. It stopped as soon as we were going straight again but the next left hand turn we made was also accompanied by a lot of stomping. We didn't think to much about it and continued on our way.
When we got to Westernaires we opened the door and were greeted with a bloody trailer. During all that stomping Beamer had managed to break a few of the boards on the side of the trailer and proceeded to knock a chunk off of his coronet band on his left rear hoof. Swell. We cleaned it up a bit and but some tripple antibiotic ointment on it and Kimi rode the rail that day (she sat on the side and watched the other girls ride.) We took Beamer home and called the vet for advise. They came out pretty quick and I got a rather interesting lesson in coronet band injuries. Turns out, antibiotic ointment will cause the coronet band to produce skin cells. The doc had us use straight iodine on the injury and the irritation the iodine causes to the area causes the coronet band to produce hoof wall. Pretty cool. He was not lame at all so we gave him about a week of stall rest and sure enough, at the end of the week the coronet band was healed over. We were VERY lucky with this injury as he didn't damage the coronet band itself, he only scraped the skin cover the band off. He healed fine.
But he was still dancing in the trailer and we didn't want another injury. Naturally, the solution was shipping boots. We got shipping boots and the first time we put them on him we laughed ourselves silly watching Beamer high step and shake his legs in an effort to get the shipping boots off. We bought some cheap shipping boots but they did protect his legs. For a short while. Until he pretty well shredded them up in the trailer.
About this time there was a parade we had to go to. I was out of town so one of the other dads pick up Kumi and Beamer and headed off to the parade. I don't remember exactly why Beamer was not wearing his shipping boots but I do remember that he scraped the coronet band on his right front hoof. Well, at least we knew what to do this time and we still had the iodine from the first time. Again, we were lucky and there was no damage to the coronet tissue itself.
We had to do something else so we bought a better pair of shipping boots. These did protect his legs but he still danced around in the trailer a lot. We figured it was only a matter of time until he hurt something else so off to Craig's List to do a little trailer shopping. We found a nice two horse slant load bumper pull by Trails West Trailers. The price wasn't to bad so we went ahead and bought it. It has a much larger tack room which is really nice for organizing and we have even used it as a changing room.
The horses had no trouble loading and unloading with the new trailer. But Beamer kept dancing. So we kept Beamer in shipping boots. He hates those things to this day. We weren't sure what to do to get him to calm down in the trailer. And then, one day, he quit. He just quit. We don't need to put shipping boots on him now because he stands quietly in the trailer for the whole ride. We may never know what set him off and I hope he doesn't start again. But just in case, the shipping boots are in the trailer tack room, waiting patiently for the day when Beamer decides the trailer is going to eat him.
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