Trailer Goal: I point, Fancy loads and Fancy Stays in Trailer.
A human fiddles with trailer, walks into the barn, picks up halter/lead rope and waits for Fancy to come into the stall.
“Are you crazy, human?” Fiddling with trailer and picking up halter means a riding workout in Fancy’s language. Fancy exists the stall and waits to see if this is a feeding opportunity. “Nope, the human holds the halter.”
Human goes into stall and out into the pasture. Fancy walks away about 20 feet. Human sighs. Fancy turns around and starts walking toward human. Human backs up with happy nonverbal body language. Whoops, Fancy goes into stall, not directly to human. Human goes into stall and has a nonverbal language discussion to ask Fancy to face. Happy Human smiles, puts halter on and leads Fancy to trailer. Human points, Fancy loads and goes to feed bucket in trailer. Fancy eats for a few moments and unloads herself. Human catches the rope and asks Fancy to load. Fancy obeys. Fancy unloads. Human points. Repeat, repeat, repeat and the sweet spot happens. Fancy stays in trailer and eats.
Suddenly a load bang comes from the neighbor. The neighbors engage in heavy duty gun target practice. Fancy tenses and unloads. Human leads Fancy to barn and stall, hoping to be able to take off halter without being knocked over by nervous horse. Nope, it went fine. “Unhaltering” happened and human safely exits stall. Target practice stopped and restarted during the afternoon, in tune with occasional rain. In the late afternoon, horses were observed walking in pasture near to target practice. Fancy has been desensitized to gunfire…with the exception of while being contained inside a trailer!