Have you had any experience in bringing a horse to Spain with a horse transport company,good or bad?

Question

I spent ages selecting a transport company to deliver my horse to the Costa Del Sol. Viewed the stables and they were perfect, however my horse arrived 6 days late having been to Benidorm , Portugal and Barcelona before being dropped off near Torremolinos. I was assured that the box had air con and not to rug her up. On arrival she was soaking wet from the skin out and took 5 days to dry out Apparantly the origional company had sub contracted another company and so on. Any experiences, advice etc would be greatly appreciated as I am adding a page to my web site to help Brits locate easily to Spain and obviously their animals also

Answer 1

I had to transport three horses from South to North once and did the same thing, and also ended up with the horses being on transport for nearly 24 hours for a 800 k trip.We stopped at four different locations to load and unload other horses.Luckily I was on the transport also and could make sure mine were watered and fed. The other time the three horses were trailered over 2200k's, had the van for themselves and it took 22 hours. My experience: shop around, ask a lot of questions, like how many horses are going to be on the transport with yours, which way are they going (the route), estimated transport time, care of the horses and anything you can think of. Sometimes it is better to take the more expensive option for the sake of the horses.
One possibility is to get in contact with people who ride or breed Andalusians, they import them and therefore have a van going there to pick up horses and since it's empty, it would be a chance to get horses TO Spain relatively low-cost. Also look on the net for transport companies in Germany, they are importing a lot of Andalusians and ship show horses all over the world. Most of their web sites are in English too.
Good luck

Answer 2

on the floor: must be the time whilst i became very youthful and taking classes on a "bombproof" newbie horse. He became all tacked-up and that i began out to steer him to the ring whilst i found out I forgot my helmet. without thinking, I rapidly tied him to a sliding stall door so i could run into the adjoining tack room. nicely, something spooked him and my knot did no longer slip out. He pulled the door off the track and ran backwards, pulling all of it the way out of the barn. He went yet another one hundred ft or so earlier battling. i became horrified and merely knew he became going to kill himself. We have been all great fortunate that he got here out of it with an fairly superficial scrape and not something extra. From that 2d on, I certainly have been very specific of what horses are tied to. fastened: whilst i became youthful - i became purely some years previous whilst my mom took me to a dude ranch for a path holiday. I had considered one of those little trolls with the loopy hair and gem bellybuttons. They caught me on a horse and that i caught the troll on the saddle horn. It became a solid extra healthful. midway down the course and suddenly, my saddle slipped thoroughly under the pony. I hit the floor between 4 hooves which had stopped short (such a competent horse!). i can nevertheless bear in mind looking up on the troll which became nevertheless caught on the horn. As an grownup - i became leaping my appendix QH and he mis-stepped earlier a three'6". We crashed through it. He fell off to his left area which threw me somewhat to the left, too. My arm have been given trapped under his shoulder as we the two skidded to a end interior the sand. no longer something broke yet i could no longer grip for a pair weeks after and my gelding had some severe raspberries observed via chiropractic differences.