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!