What does Warwick Schiller say about trailer loading and how does his approach differ from traditional pressure and release?

Warwick Schiller's thinking on trailer loading has evolved significantly over the years, and his more recent perspective is meaningfully different from conventional pressure-and-release trailer loading methods. Where most trainers focus on making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult, Schiller has moved toward understanding why the horse is resistant in the first place — and his answer increasingly points to the horse's nervous system rather than the horse's attitude or dominance. Schiller makes the distinction between a horse that won't load because it doesn't understand what's being asked and a horse that won't load because it is in a state of nervous system activation — essentially too stressed to think or learn. Traditional pressure-and-release works well for the first horse but can make the second horse worse, because adding pressure to an already activated nervous system pushes the horse further into a reactive state where learning is impossible. For the nervous system-activated horse, Schiller recommends what he calls going slower than you think you need to. He will spend entire sessions simply standing with the horse near the trailer without asking it to load at all — waiting for signs of processing like licking and chewing, blinking, yawning, or a deep breath. Once those signs come consistently near the trailer, the horse is in a learning state and loading happens relatively quickly. Schiller also emphasizes that horses which have been forced to load — even once — carry that memory and may take longer to build genuine confidence than horses that were never forced. He considers this patient approach more efficient long-term because it addresses the root cause rather than overcoming fear through repetition alone. His YouTube and podcast content on this topic has influenced a significant number of trainers to slow down their trailer loading process.