Their ad was different last week, had two “horses and
sheep for sale” and another “half Arab half APHA for sale”.
My neighbor is looking for a small safe sound horse for trail riding so I
inquired, they said the horse would be good for a beginner rider, so we went
and looked the next day. These people know NOTHING about horses, I have no idea
how they ended up with all of them. The woman stood by and watched while I had
to show the man how to bridle the 13H pretty little pinto. The horses looked
well fed, except for this little guy, he had many, many scrapes on him (the guy
said he followed one of the other horses thru a fence) and every other horse
there picked on him. The rest of the horses are mostly geldings, the little
pinto they’d had for only 6 mos., the others I didn’t ask.
We asked the man to ride him first as we were not willing to
risk a bucking horse and we’d already had owners showing their “well
trained, child safe horses” put on a bucking show. He was very
hesitant to try to ride, but did get on the little guy. Although he was gentle
for a lead line pony, he was obviously not trained and didn’t have a clue
what to do when someone was on his back unless he was being led and he did that
willingly and without any fuss about tarps etc. He peed a very dark, murky
yellow, not orange, red or coffee color. I inquired as to the availability of
water and he said the horse drank lots, there was a full 80gal tank with a
float on it that I then saw the horses drinking out of. He had hay there and
mentioned the high price and I told him to go buy from a farmer he’d get
a better price. He has a flatbed and said he’d do that. I told him he
needed to find someone who wants to train a horse to buy the little pinto.
None of the horses there had been bred/born there, but due
to a stallion running with the group there was at least one pregnant mare which
he offered to let us try. He’d never ridden her. Then he said there was
another that was “supposedly” good, but he’d never ridden him
either. He had an old horse that looked like she had back/hip problems that he
said he’d rescued and put more than 100 pounds on her already, but she
still had a set of shoes on and her feet only very slightly overgrown, so I
think she hadn’t been there long. I have no idea why these people have
horses or where they came from, they didn’t breed them. I think their
minds aren’t quite right and maybe they go around collecting free horses
that they thought they could sell? or maybe they picked them up at the auction
and now realize the incredible financial burden of having 9 or so horses and
have to take them back to where they got them? Who knows…
Then there was the party stating they had room for a rescue.
When I inquired as to whether they wanted a riding horse or pasture ornament,
the poster flipped out that I would dare call any animal an ornament…blah,
blah, blah. I told her that was a well known term of endearment commonly used
to express the fact that the horse can still adorn the pasture even though it
is not ridden. She was looking for a nice free riding horse, obviously didn’t
have much horse knowledge either.
