I would look for good feet and legs tho on whatever you buy - those are
going to take a beating in this sport. The old adage "No foot, no horse" (or
whatever) is really true here. In other sports, you can get by if your horse
is not really sound with bar shoes, elevator pads, a gram of bute, lots of
maintenance, etc, etc...Not so here - iffy feet/soundness don't cut it for
50 or 100 miles and ride after ride.
That is not to say that every horse you see doing this is 100% sound or
there aren't horses out there with some special shoeing or whatever - I'm
just saying if you can start with as close to ideal legs/feet as possible,
you'll be doing yourself a favor.
For me, an endurance horse has to have a pretty head (okay, for me, any
horse has to have a pretty head). I don't care that I don't ride the head -
I have to look at it. But that's a personal thing :-)
The other biggie is good, even gaits -are they the same to the right as to
the left? Does the horse move out from the shoulder? Track up behind? Is he
willing to move forward?
Sanity is nice but not a necessity if you have the other stuff :-)
Tina
Huntsville, AL
hickst@nichols.com