Shopping for Horses
I’m haunted by the spirits of horses I didn’t buy. That’s not quite the way I meant to start this paragraph. Shopping for a new horse is exhilarating, terrifying and wonderful. It’s kind of like a cross between your best birthday present and waking up in Vegas married to a complete stranger.
Shopping for a new horse requires you to balance between being practical and listening to your heart. Listen to your heart too much and you can end up with the beautiful chestnut filly that takes your breath away – again and again, as you hit the ground, because only a Cheyenne warrior could stay on her. On the other hand, if you only listen to what your trainer says and what your carefully planned budget will allow, you may miss out on the friend of a lifetime.
Decades ago, a newbie horse owner, I went shopping for my first horse. We had two Appy mares that belonged to my daughters and I had a firm, clear idea of the right horse for me: A calm, older gelding. Something reliable, something trained.
Instead, I fell in love. The bay filly whose eyes met mine across the field that day was everything I asked for – that is, fully trained – and a few things more that I didn’t even know I needed. Such as brave, willing, hard-hoofed and sound for the next two decades. After having kids and going to college, buying her was the best life decision I ever made.
That being said, right after I bought her I had a disturbing dream. Our horse shopping had included checking out a half-draft mare, a lovely chocolate-colored girl with wide hips and shaggy white fetlocks. The owner was getting divorced. She had to sell the farm, and this mare with her unbroken offspring – five and four years old – had to go. I liked the mare, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to ride her without putting in a lot of work. So, we passed.
Three weeks later I woke in the night, as startled as if the mare had neighed in my ear. She was afraid, and she was at auction. To this day I can feel the terror she felt being separated from her family and the farm she knew. I dug out the piece of paper with the woman’s number on it, but the number didn’t work anymore.
I wish I could be sure it was just a dream. I wish I knew how that mare’s life turned out. But that’s the problem with horse shopping: horses are too much people to take this lightly. You could never walk into a store with enough money to buy your best friend from college, but that’s what horse shopping feels like.
Horse shopping for others you can be a little more hard-bitten, but that’s tough, too. When a therapy riding barn I worked with needed a new horse, a group of us carpooled to go horse shopping. We needed steady and sound. Older was good. A few prospects had contacted the barn with offers of horses they thought would be a good fit.
The first one, a lovely light bay mare, had been a girl’s best friend through high school. Through horse shows and trail rides, vet visits and cold winter mornings… But the girl had grown into a young mother, with very little time and even less money. It broke her heart, but she had to find a home for her old friend. But the prospective buyer before us had ridden this mare hard for an hour and a half, putting her through all her paces despite the fact that the mare was out of shape, and when I led her out of the stall she was limping. No one wanted to get on her: it would just be cruel. And she had pads in her shoes, so was it true that she was sound that morning? I think we believed the girl’s story, but for a therapy horse… we couldn’t risk it.
Next we went to a Paso Fino barn, where an older Morgan with the unfortunate name of Luvvy was up for sale. The farm held at least forty horses in two or three large barns; we wandered around a bit before someone in a green polo shirt offered to help us. The sound system at the farm played radio hits nonstop at ear-splitting volume. We had to shout to hear one another. Luvvy’s owner was not only not there, but not coming, so we took him out, lunged him, and gave him a short trot under saddle. He seemed like a steady fellow, which is more than I would have been in his place.
We all liked him. And then the green-shirted woman told us, “He has heaves.” Even with the best of care, poor Luvvy was a walking dead man.
If I had been shopping for myself, I would have snatched him out of that place and put him on a grass-only diet and bought him a nebulizer, and and and… bought him another few years, because he was a fine fellow and he and I understood one another.
So my best advice, if you’re horse shopping, is: Bring a friend.
Because horse shopping is hard.
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