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Results to be proud of!
We beam with pride every time we get a good review or recommendation so we already knew you love the Equi Travel Safe. But we wanted to go deeper, find out the what the users actually thought after using it, how horses reacted to it and what impact it has had on the horses behaviour and stress levels. We were truly shocked by the results!
When asked how you’d rate the ETS overall, you scored us 4.8 out of 5 stars! That’s just brilliant and we couldn’t be prouder.
In fact you scored us highly across the board in:
Peace of mind
Efficiency in preventing rearing
Value for money
Reducing the desire to rear.
But the results that shocked us the most were those involving things the ETS shouldn’t impact on such as horses behaviour other than rearing and horses stress levels. We often hear comments like “surely restricting them will only cause them to panic more”, well this survey proves otherwise. Not one person thought their horses stress level increased yet nearly 73% thought their horses stress levels were considerably improved. Now that’s amazing! It also showed to have positively impacted on other behaviour as well. This is something we’d heard from our customers and even experienced ourselves but the results were overwhelming.
I’d like to personallythank every single person who took the time to fill in our survey, we are very grateful to you. Will have left this survey open and invite new customers to fill it in. It can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CTXY9KF
Horse Safety and problematic horses- By Kevin Parker
Safety and primarily horse safety must be at the heart of any good horsebox design. For KPH our ethos continues to be manufacturing the safest possible horse transport for our customers and their horses. Planning and manufacturing around worst case scenarios generated a considerable list of safety items.
Here are just a few considerations we take into account and include as part of our horsebox design:
Colours and making an inviting entry and horse area, soundproofing and reducing vibration and rattles (our manufacturing process reduces sound and vibration by over 40%), sharp edges and cappings, strength under accident conditions, grip and finish of horse area and ramp, internal sizes, airflow, ventilation and vehicle exhaust gasses, heat, stress in transit, stress when standing, surveillance with a view to problematic travellers, load height and vehicle sway, ramp angle, safety paddings, visual and audible warnings, payloads, tie rings and hay net rings, chemical washing and steam cleaning, construction strength, build and individual component longevity, smooth ride characteristics, bespoke breast bar heights and stall widths.
We then considered behavioural characteristics; horse boredom, kicking, rearing and pawing as priorities. Finally at hand over, we demonstrate our horsebox safety features to customers.
Through design we have reduced as much risk as possible and we are constantly reviewing and developing safety features for our builds. Fortunately, our bespoke design exactly tailored to customers’ horses adds another level of safety and we can report very few incidents in more than twenty years of manufacturing.
Unfortunately there are always unpredictable events or circumstances we cannot plan for including other road users, or even external influences such as loud noises. Some horses simply present with problematic or ingrained behaviour and then there are the few who are first time offenders.
New technology for horse safety
Within the industry, rearing horses or ponies are the hardest thing to design for. We see plenty of reactive designs, either driven by sales or dealing with the serious after effects of rearing. Reading a review of horse transport safety the study explains that 51% of reported incidents involve horses rearing.
Looking to the future and further development of our horsebox safety, we want to offer our customers preventative solutions rather than ones that deal with serious incidents after they occur. To this end we contacted Equi Travel Safe and started a dialog that led to further research and eventually a sample harness and field test. The results were so impressive we now fit part of the system as standard into our Aeos horseboxes. Plus, for customers with more problematic horses we can add the full Equi Travel Safe system at any time in the future.
Equi Travel Safe Testimonial
Deborah is one of our customers with an Aeos 4.5 tonne Hybrid horsebox and a 16.3 Irish Sports horse who exhibits some challenging behaviour. We modified our design with extra padding etc and although it was much safer, it did little to prevent the rearing and travel issues. After contacting Equi Travel Safe and talking through the problem we decided to use this horse as a case study. It is worth pointing out we have no affiliation with the company, they just have an excellent product that fits our ethos perfectly and makes horse transport safer for problematic horses.
From Deborah:
Hi Kevin
Thanks for your call to check in on how the Equi Travel Safe is working for us.
I’m delighted to hear you are doing a blog on horses with travel issues. I read so many posts on forums from people with similar issues to what I was experiencing and there needs to be more awareness of this product as it could help a lot of people.
Safety for my horses travelling is of utmost importance to me. Since owning my own horsebox I have only ever had KPH and I know this is core to what you do so I knew you’d be there for us when I approached you with a travel issue.
December 2016 I traded in my much loved KPH 7.5 tonne horsebox for a new Aeos 4.5 tonne Hybrid horsebox. I am still thrilled with it.
My 16.3 Irish Sports Horse has always given us challenges when out on the horsebox, thankfully not so much loading or on the move, but when he’s standing – he becomes impatient.
As you know, we made a few modifications to the horse area and I appreciate all your help with this, however, when he learned that he could sit back on his hocks and launch himself over the partition or onto the tack locker at the time it seemed like a stallion box was the only option and I had to do something as we wouldn’t travel again with this horse, it was a matter of time until something terrible happened.
You mentioned the Equi Travel Safe but you didn’t have a case study of one being on one of your boxes so I think we were both a bit sceptical at the time……. but it was worth a try…….
Kevin, it works.
It has changed our life.
No longer do I have to take multiple people out with me when I travel for fear of what he’s going to do if he decides it’s one of those days.
I have no evidence of this but I truly believe he feels safe when he’s wearing it. He still has the odd moment when he starts trying to climb but when he realises he can’t lift his shoulders he just stands there eating his hay.
For the first time since I have owned this horse I have been to a show on my own.
I now go training weekly on my own.
I do have the odd meltdown when a hear someone else’s horse kicking off in the horsebox but I know it can’t be mine…….
Horses jumping on tack lockers is a massive problem.
This product solves it….
I really do hope that one day this is fitted in every horsebox as safety standard.
I’m very much looking forward to reading your blog. If you need any more anecdotal evidence or context let me know.
Best Regards
Deb
Conclusion
It addresses a problem mostly glossed over, it works perfectly and it has been thoroughly tested. In fact it is so good we have incorporated Equi Travel Safe into our safety features on the Aeos horsebox range as standard.
If you have further questions please send an email from our Contact Us page or alternatively call 01995640079.
Owners ‘put lives at risk’ to rescue trapped horses *H&H VIP*
The researchers wanted to see a “snapshot” of what was happening, and has now published its findings in a paper titled An Initial Review of Horse Transport Safety.
Jim Green, of BARTA, told H&H the organisation is now planning further academic research to build on these initial findings, which will be coming “shortly”.
“We want to look at the causes behind problems in transportation — we want to find out why rather than just coming up with a mechanical solution to the problem,” he said.
He added that further research is being undertaken with a view to bringing in recommendations that will improve the safety of horses in transport.
The organisation received 129 responses to its initial survey, which it ran in collaboration with Intelligent Horsemanship, which showed that 104 incidents took place between 28 April 2010 and the closing date, 30 June 2015.
Among the key findings were that people will put their own and others’ lives at risk to rescue their horses.
“The fire service has grave concerns about the risk of people being seriously or fatally injured when endeavouring to rescue their animals from danger, and this includes rescuing horses in trouble inside transportation vehicles,” said the review.
It also found equines were likely to be badly injured in any transportation incident and that horses were as likely to go over a front-facing barrier as a rear-facing one.
Other findings included: more than 75% of incidents involved a horse’s behaviour; few horses had any “systematic training” in loading or travelling, and almost a third of incidents happened while the horsebox or trailer was stationary.
Read more at http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/owners-put-lives-risk-rescue-trapped-horses-hh-vip-532865#dh8HdTP3pQYOdtI2.99
PLEASE READ- The Dangers of Small Horseboxes
After loosing Ettie last year I have been searching for a new friend. I found one a fortnight ago, we've called him Enys. I have stepped away from the arabs as he is an ISH but the fiasco that followed is something that all breed owners should read, so I am posting it here.
On saturday I went to go and pick him up. We have a little 3.5tonne horsebox, rear facing. Everyone always remarks what a lovely box it is. Enys is quite young, 5 and not long over from Ireland. He's been in lots of big boxes but never a small one.
He loaded with no problems and we set off at about 3pm. A few miles down the road he started mucking around. While I was watching though our little window, I saw him rear up and get his front legs over the front partition, that seperates the living from the horse bit. We stopped immediately but he panicked and ended up even further into the living. In the end he had two feet in the living, two feet in the horse bit.
Lukcily I managed to calm him through the door. We kept the door closed, as he was flailing at times. We tried calling the old owner to get the number of the vets but no luck. So we called 999 and the police came out. The police said it would be 30mins before a vet could come. By miracle however, an equine vet was passing and stopped. He was able to give Enys a bit of sedative, though with some difficulty.
Then the fire service and animal rescue came out. After more time it was decided that the only way to get him out was forward and as our jockey door was too small they would have to cut open our horsebox. They also decided that they wanted to try and do it at the vets, which miraculously was only down the road. So my mum had to drive our horsebox with Enys still in the same position.
It was about 4.30 by the time we arrived at the vets. We had over fourteen people working on getting Enys out. They aenestised him and then started cutting down the partition and the back on the horse box.
It was about 7pm that they managed to drag him out using winch and then pull him into the vets padded room on a taurpaulin. Until this time we had been unable to see if he had damaged himself at all. To our relief there were no huge gapping wounds.
Him waking up was one of the most dangerous time, because shock and we didn't know if he had damaged his legs. Thankfully he got up fine.
To cut a long story a bit shorter. He stayed at the vets a few days and then was brought to ours in a big lorry today. He travelled fine.
We were very very lucky with the circumstances - a vet coming past when they did probably saved Eny's life. The animal rescue guy said they have cases like this once fortnight around the country, mostly ending in the horse being put to sleep. He said the only way to warn people about the dangers was by word of mouth. So this is me spreading the word.
I don't know what long term damage it has done to Enys, either mentally or physically but we'll cross that bridge when we came to it.
Here are some photos of our horsebox:
