Top 7 Horse Shopping Tips: #1 Know What You Are REALLY Looking For

Let’s face not, most of us are not Grand Prix riders. While we may dream those dreams, and work towards them and someday, hopefully, get there - we aren’t there just yet. So rather than buy the horse we dream of being able to ride after 5 more years of training, it’s important to assess, honestly, where we are right now in our riding and what kind of horse will truly help us achieve our goals now.

I’ve seen too many people go out and spend oodles of money on their dream horses - huge fancy gorgeous beasties, only to end up 3 months later unable to ride the horse themselves and having to have their trainer ride the horse full time maybe because the gaits are just too big or because the horse is too sensitive to be happy with a less than perfect seat.

So the first step to successful horse shpping is to honestly define your goals. To do this you not only have to know what you want to achieve, but you have to honestly understand where you are in relationship to that goal.

is your goal to move up two or three levels in the next three years, but you still can’t quite SIT the trot? If so, then rather than looking for that super fancy Grand Prix fireball, maybe you look for something that is solidly trained with soft enough gaits you can learn a lot quickly on them instead of struggling for years to sit a massive trot.

Is your goal to ride a little dressage, but mostly just enjoy hacking around and trail riding? Then maybe you look for something that has been there done that – an all around horse that will keep you safe and go through mud puddles and scramble you over logs without batting an eye.

Is your goal to have a fancy horse that someone else shows for you but you get to enjoy owning? Then go look for that super athlete that maybe you can’t possibly sit the trot on just yet, but a professional would knock your socks off on!

Each goal has a different kind of horse that will help you along the way. It’s a difficult thing to decide to go with the less flashy, solid citizen but that solid citizen will help you achieve your dreams far faster than a horse you can’t or don’t enjoy riding yourself.

Top 7 Tips for Successful Horse Shopping

My Top 7 Tips for Successful (and fun) Horse Shopping

Last year I sold my wonderful schoolmaster, Schan, and started looking for my next upper level prospect. Last time I looked for a horse, it was a very slow and painful process - looking through small print ads and then calling a bunch of numbers to try to get more info. Most of the calls, of course, would go to an answering machine and which meant waiting for people to call me back which seemed to almost invariably lead to long-running games of phone-tag. Eventually, when we finally got to talk to each other, if the horse was still available, I got to ask all my questions and then, if I was still interested, ask them to send me (via snail-mail) a video, if they had one. Then, if I was lucky, a week or so later the long anticipated video would show up. If I liked the video then I coudl proceed with arranging a time to meet and ride the horse and go from there.

That’s a lot of “if’s” and a lot of time just for one horse ad and sadly I was never lucky enough to find my perfect match from the first ad I called on so I spent a ton of time on this process whenever I was looking for a horse! I suppose I could have outsourced this whole process to a professional trainer who could have used their network to find me that perfect horse, but I was always on a tight budget so I did it all myself.

These days, whatever my budget is, I still choose to do the search myself because it’s just plain fun to go horse shopping! The internet makes the process sooo much easier and faster. More and more ads not only have pictures, but have videos too. If you need more information you can have a quick email conversation rather than playing phone tag. Heck, these days I surf the internet looking at horse ads at least once a week just for fun - mind you, this behaviour is very dangerous because I fall in love and want to buy them all when I really can’t handle another horse right now!

While horse shopping is easier than ever, there are still some things you should be aware of and watch out for when looking for your next equine partner-in-crime. Remember it’s a lot easier to buy a horse than to sell a horse, so it’s super important to be careful!

Top 7 tips for successful horse shopping:

1) Know exactly what you are looking for, BEFORE you start looking.
2) Use your resources wisely.
3) Ask lots and lots and lots and lots questions.
4) Go look at as many horses as possible and take a friend with you!
5) Do a good vet check, no matter the price of the horse – Xrays can be so important!
6) DO Look a gift horse in the mouth!
And the hardest one of all…
7) Don’t Fall in Love!

I’ll dig more into these tips in my next few posts!

Happy Riding!

Welcome to the Dressage Maven Blog!

Howdy Folks - Welcome to the Dressage Maven Blog!

 My goal with this blog is to talk about all things dressage - riding, training, competing, attire, saddles, bits, boots, conformation, art - anything and everything. A little bit about myself - My name is Georges and I’ve been riding and showing for almost 30 years now (don’t even ask how old I am!). I started out riding western pleasure on Quarter Horses in Texas, then moved on to eventing on Percheron Crosses in Georgia,  then it was on to California where I started my love affair with dressage. Three years ago I moved to Sweden where I spent a year training intensively near Flyinge (Sweden’s State Stud) and am now settled in Northern California with my Westphalian gelding Sparky and my bonafide American Mustang gelding Dusty.  

By day I run Equestrian Entries a site that offers online horse show entries for dressage (and soon eventing!). Check it out at www.equestrianentries.com!   Not only does the system fill out your forms for you but it checks to make sure they are complete and correct too. You can submit your entries and pay your fees - all online! No more messy paperwork and missing cards! Check it out at www.EquestrianEntries.com. 

I also spend a lot of my weekends during the height of the show season volunteering at different dressage shows in my area.  I do pretty much everything: ring stewarding, running the show office,  calling tests, bit checking, volunteer manager, etc ect.  This behind the scenes work has taught me so much about dressage shows. I highly recommend volunteering at as many shows as possible if you want to really feel comfortable at shows and understand how they work all the way through. 

When I’m not working on Equestrian Entries, or volunteering at horse shows, you can usually find me at the stables with Sparky and Dusty.  I’m trying to get Sparky ready for Prix St. Georges in 2009.  I’ve only owned him 10 months now and while we’ve made a lot of progress, we still have a ways to go.  He came to me with some pretty serious issues (the previous owners told me all about them before I even came out to see him, so I knew what I was getting into).  We’ve worked through a lot of his issues (sore back, nerve issues at the girth, lack of confidence, fear of mounting blocks etc etc) but he is still very worried about objects on the outside of the arena and arena fencing in general.  Other than his fear of the actual dressage court itself, he’s incredibly talented, very classically trained and should make a great show horse.  Just need to get him over his fears - but he’s getting better daily and that’s all I can ask for!

While I’m certainly not a world-class expert, I hope people will find this blog helpful and interesting!  Drop me a line anytime if you have a question for me or a topic you’d like to see a post on! 

Happy Riding!
-Your Dressage Maven