Horse shopping rant. With linked examples to laugh at, yay!
I've been horse shopping for a client who (thankfully) has a decent budget and realistic expectations. Like most equestrians I love horse shopping and I'm lucky I get paid to do it. But a few things that commonly pop up when browsing ads always irk me, so imma have a good ol' rant (just for the fun of it). If you're selling a horse, maybe try not to be one of THOSE sellers. I hate those sellers. But first, this client is awesome and realistic about her needs/budget and willing to consider good horses who don't fit her "ideal image". But lots of buyers are living in the land of make-believe about horse buying and that brings me to my first rant, about some horse buyers:
- "I'm looking to buy a horse for Eventing. Any kind of warmblood is ok, so long as it's registered. I'm 5'7 so it has to be 17hh or above. Any age between 4 and 6 is fine, but must already be jumping at least 3' solidly. Geldings only. I want something with spots and chrome but I'm willing to consider palominos, cremelos, or rainbow stripes. Absolutely no buck/rear/bolt and nothing that needs training because I want my 5 year old daughter to be able to trail ride alone.... so definitely has to be totally kid safe and bomb-proof. My budget is $600, but I could probably go as high as $750 for the right horse." Bitch, please.
So anyways, horse ads. For the record these aren't horses I'm actually considering. Most are from Craigslist, because Craigslist is hilarious. Now on to the ranting, starting with a big pet peeve of mine:
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WTF is "16.5hh"?? I seriously don't know. Do you mean 16.2hh? Or 17hh? It doesn't really matter in this ad because this horse is clearly nowhere near 17hh-- maybe the seller is measuring to his poll? As a bonus this 13 year old horse knows "front, left, right, and back" and he "likes to buck some, but no lowballers because he's a very nice and fat horse." Mmmhhmmmmm. This whole ad is absolutely hilarious: http://ift.tt/2eGIPle
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Why are you standing on your horse? I don't know if sellers in other places do this, but here appearently buyers line up around the block for horses you can stand on top of. You know, for all the Horse Standing competitions. In almost two decades as an international professional I've never stood on a horse. I suppose the horse can't be completely insane (at least at the halt) if someone's standing on him, but is that really the best showcase of his training? How is he when his feet are moving? Doesn't it hurt his back? It's the most useless thing ever but appearently around here it's the ultimate mark of a well-trained horse. TBH this is actually an all-around fantastic ad (sellers take note-- this is how it's done), so I'll bet this horse wins a lot of ribbons in Horse Standing: http://ift.tt/2grA1mX
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No info. Why why why would you put up an ad with no details? To let us know you've got some kind of ungulate which we could buy for some amount of money? Are the details a secret? Do I need to know a secret handshake to get the confidential details on your horse? Do sellers honestly not realize buyers want to know stuff about their horse? This ad gets bonus points for misspelling "for sale": http://ift.tt/2eGHydV
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Or no pictures. Picture ads can be expensive and I'll admit I've gone the free ad route before. There's not much excuse to not put a picture on Craigslist, where it's free... though lots of people still don't. But in this ad, how in the world do you have a $30,000 horse for sale if you can't spend $20 to put up a picture of him?: http://ift.tt/2gqNY4C
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Or useless pictures. I get not every owner understands how to take good conformation shots, or even knows evaluating conformation is a thing people do. There's dozens of ads with nothing but a horse's face, and probably hundreds for performance horses with only a picture of a raggedy filthy horse grazing 500 yards away from the camera. But if-- like in this ad-- you're specifically going to advertise your horse as "stunning" and take the time to put up 4 photos... why the heck not show anything past his neck? What's going on back there? Is he a reverse-centaur? http://ift.tt/2eGN2Fq
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WTF is "3/4 registered"? Could you only afford to register the front 75% of the horse? Are you 3/4ths of the way through the process? Did you register her but accidentally ripped part of the papers? Or she's registered with 3 out of 4 organizations? Because if you're trying to say 3/4 of her breeding comes from registered animals, what you really mean is she is "unregistered." That's how registration works-- if they're not 100% registered, they're not registered, period. It also begs the question: if she's 3/4 registered, that must mean one of her parents is 1/2 registered? (O4 maybe they're both 3/4 registered?) Yeah, that's also more simply referred to as "unregistered". Certainly some breed books register crosses, but once you do the animal becomes "registered"-- all of her, 100%-- not "3/4 registered". Let's be honest here, what you're selling for $4500 is a grade filly: http://ift.tt/2grA1TZ
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Your horse is a what? Around here most horses are QHs. But sometimes the seller isn't sure what their horse is and they've got an active imagination, or they realize people pay waaaaaay more for breeds other than what their horse is. I've seen QHs that were Hannoverians, QHs that were Andalusians, QHs that were Trehkeners... the sky's the limit when your horse looks ambiguous and it only takes one trusting sap to get quadruple the money. Here's a TWH (probably) who's a Gypsy-cross: http://ift.tt/2vGLzFF I feel terrible for this horse because he's been listed for months and looks underweight, wormy, and miserable. Here's a registered TWH who at first glance I thought was the first horse: http://ift.tt/2x75HVc Hhhhhhmmmmmmm.
There's more but that's it for now-- I gotta get back to horse shopping (ugh, so terrible, gah). Feel free to chime in with your horse shopping pet peeves. Just for fun, here's an ad that made me laugh, titled "The most WORTHLESS gelding mini-mule" in the grand tradition of "a pony called Satan": http://ift.tt/2grA2Y3
EDIT: Formatting.
Submitted August 30, 2017 at 08:46PM by calm_chowder
via reddit http://ift.tt/2eGM2kT
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