Virtual Brush Box

Called another seller on Friday. Found yet another person who couldn’t be bothered to talk to me. I do not understand the business model that allows people to reject possible customers so quickly.

In her defense, we got off wrong-footed and she decided that her stock was too high-end for me. She might be right. In the Southeastern US, hunter/jumper horses seem to be expensive. There is not as much of it, so there is not the range of talent, training, and expense as in the Mid-Atlantic.

In addition, the Southeast is amazingly trainer driven. Buying a horse on my own is like trying to sell a novel without an agent. In MD/VA people worked with trainers, but also worked on their own. Some old coot with a few horses out back might be clueless, might be a retired MFH.

For those of you who have lived and ridden (or shown dogs or knitted (knat?)) in different places, how has the attitude toward independent operators varied?

Horse Shopping posts.

Part of the reason sellers may not take us seriously as buyers [Eeny, Report, Cultural (What can I say, it’s an ongoing issue.)] is that we don’t futz around. Once we’ve seen enough to know this horse is not coming home with us, we make nice-nice noises and leave.

For the horse shopping visit last weekend [A/P], we spent perhaps 20 minutes at the barn. Most of those minutes were on the order of confirming our initial decision. As soon as I looked over his withers, I was 99% sure this was not the right horse. My eye level is exactly 16h. If I can look over the withers, the horse ain’t 16.1h, no matter what the ad says.

Still, I was willing to admit the possibility that he would change my mind. After all, Charisma was “this little, fat, black pony” the first time Mark Todd saw him. We watched our possible purchase walk, trot, canter, and jump one fence. Red flags fluttered. We said thank you. I didn’t ride the horse. I never put on my britches. What is the point of making the horse work or of disconveniencing owner any longer than necessary?

We’ve been doing this a while, longer than Possible Purchase plus his rider have been alive, by almost a factor of two, for each one of us. We have learned what we like. We might be right. We might be wrong. We are definitely decisive.

Horse evaluating is akin to chicken sexing. It’s a complicated mix of factors but do it long enough and you get mighty fast at it.

How long does it take you to size up a horse?
Am I going too fast & possibly missing a wunderkind?

Prior horse shopping posts.

We looked at a horse over the weekend. Go us.

The Downsides
The owners would rather lease than sell. As a result, the price was, shall we say, optimistic.

Too short. He might have made the advertised height if you mohawked his mane. This is a problem as I am no longer skinny enough to look good on little ones. I look okay on Mathilda, but she’s a doublewide.

A few mannerisms that could have been greenness or could have been a problem needed further investigation.

He was a cute enough with a nice, if stubborn, look in his eye. I got no problem with attitude. Previous Horse exuded ‘tude. However, the rest of the package was unexciting to me.

The Upside
I finally figured out what I want to see when I go look at a horse. I want a horse who knocks my socks off. Socklessness is not necessarily a result of flash. I have been enchanted by a chunky Quarter Horse [Moses Delivered a Gift] and a curmudgeonly cart horse [“Just George”, Horse Illustrated, February 2011]. In short, I want to see a horse who makes me think, ‘Yes, this is gonna be fun.’

Life is too short to ride uninteresting horses.

Prior horse shopping posts.