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!