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Re: [RC] re: a new horse - Chris Pauswow, I'm so sorry about your horse purchase gone wrong. I've bought and sold over the Net. so far, no one who has bought a horse from me has been unhappy. they all still have the horses. I do know how you feel. when I purchased my stallion online, I got gorgeous pictures of him. the horse who stepped off the shipping van was really pathetic looking. about 200 pounds underweight. He was weaving badly in the trailer stall. He was supposed to be 20 but looked 30 or more. I knew that I didn't check into the situation as closely as I should have and bought the horse on faith. However, everything else about him was right, so we got his teeth fixed, wormed him and put him on a good diet, and he looks better than the pictures that sold him to me! we've dealt with the weaving by leaving him outside. He's much happier. He's turned out to be a really good horse after our initial dismay.
So many things can go wrong from both sides of a horse deal. I've seen sellers get a bad rap when the buyer really wasn't honest about his or her level of expertise or what he or she really wanted in a horse. communication problems usually are at the heart of something like this. a seller near here was sued by a buyer who said the seller sold him a wild and dangerous horse. turns out the buyer had claimed to be a good horseman, but really had only ridden "renta horses" a couple of times. So he bought way too much horse.
that's one reason I always use a sales or breeding contract, even when doing business with my friends. It just puts everything on the table. Even when I gave a horse away, I put everything in writing that I knew about the horse and why I was giving him away. My contract has a line for requesting a prepurchase exam on a horse and a place for the buyer to sign if she elects NOT to get one. If the buyer is choosing not to do a prepurchase, then the she is taking on part of the responsibility.
I once sold a horse to a riding student. the horse was here on consignment and she took a few lessons on him. I even took her to see and ride other horses I knew were for sale so she'd be making a decision with some good comparisons. I was a bit nervous about the sale as the horse was a sweetie but a bit forward moving for a novice rider. She knew that and we discussed it. Three years later, she still has the horse, so it worked out. she also knew up front that he was a cribber. It was hard to hide it when he was chewing on the hitching rail as she tacked him up, LOL.
I hope the seller and buyer in this case can work things out. And a good angelic temperament is worth a lot, even if he is a cribber! A friend who gives lessons has a lesson horse who is a diehard cribber. but he's worth his weight in gold. She can put anyone on him and not fear that something bad will happen. He was even quiet a calm when a snake dropped out of the barn rafters right in front of him.
You might want to give this a chance and see if it will work out. You can treat the worms and feed him well to build him back up. If everything else about the horse is right, cribbing might be something you can overlook. Yes, the seller should have disclosed it. But it's better than getting a horse who is lame or something.
chris
Carolyn Burgess <carolyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Slowee, slowee catchee monkey," Rudyard Kipling, from The Jungle Book
Chris Paus
BayRab Acres http://pages.prodigy.net/paus
Lake Region SWA http://lakeregionswa.fws1.com
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