A professional transporter meets your horse as a stranger, possibly in the dark, possibly running to a schedule shared with other horses. Everything they need to know has to survive that first meeting without you standing there to translate, which is why the brief belongs in writing, sent before the day, with a copy travelling in the cab.
Identity and Paperwork That Travel With the Horse
Open with the horse himself: name and stable name, age, breed or type, height, colour and markings distinctive enough to pick him out of a yard of bays, and his microchip number. State that his passport travels with him — it must — and include any health certificate or test paperwork the journey requires, noting where in the bundle each document sits. Give the collection and delivery addresses in full, with the names of who hands him over and who receives him, so the driver is never relying on a postcode and a wave.
How This Horse Loads and Travels, Honestly
This is the section owners are tempted to flatter, and the one where honesty pays. Say whether he walks straight up the ramp or needs ten patient minutes, whether he travels better with a companion or alone, whether he paws, weaves, sweats or arrives having barely moved. Note what he wears for the journey — travel boots or bandages, a rug in cold weather, a tail guard — and anything that genuinely helps: a haynet tied where he can reach it settles this horse; a partition left wide suits that one. A transporter warned about a kicker or a horse who rushes backwards off the ramp can plan for it; one who discovers it will simply remember your name.
Feeding, Water and Comfort on the Road
Write out the road plan for a long journey: whether he should have a haynet throughout, what feed, if any, is to be given at rest stops and exactly how much, and how he drinks on the road, since some horses refuse strange water and do better with water from home in a container you supply. Flag anything he must not be fed by well-meaning strangers at rest stops or overnight stabling. If any care prescribed by your vet falls due mid-journey — a dressing checked, a feed addition given — write the instruction out in plain words with the timing, and make sure the transporter has agreed to it before the day.
Contacts and the Plan at the Other End
Close with the human chain: your own number, answered for the whole journey; the receiving person's number and the earliest and latest arrival they can accept; your vet's number at home and, for a long journey, a vet or the destination yard's vet at the other end. Say what should happen if the horse arrives distressed or injured, or the delivery falls through — who decides, and where he can be stabled overnight. Settle it all before the wheels move, and the journey runs on decisions already made.
That brief is a page lifted straight from KinsLe's Pet Passport — the horse's records kept together in one portable packet — so identity, habits, feeding and contacts reach the transporter as one document instead of a dozen messages.