WHY DILIGENCE MATTERS

Two parents wanted to purchase their teenage daughter a lovely fancy show hunter horse. 

The daughter had ridden the horse in a lesson, and the trainer said the daughter could show it at an A rated show the next week. All seemed to go well until the morning of the show, when the barn manager demanded a check for high five figures, or the show-ride wouldn’t go on. Despite feeling uncomfortable at the pressure, the parents handed over the check. 

Later that day, the daughter’s dream came true: for the first time ever, she won grand champion of Children’s Hunter Horse.  Two weeks later, her horse went dead lame in the hind end. 

Of course, once the horse was sold and the owner relinquished feed and care, the concoction was stopped and the lameness emerged. So great was the disappointment and financial loss for the family that the daughter stopped riding and did not return until she was a middle-aged adult. 

This situation could have been greatly reduced in frustration or entirely avoided through doing the following things before purchasing the horse:

1. A pre-purchase veterinary examination, including flexions, x-rays on any positive flexions, and a thorough drug screen
2. A third-party agent, trainer or other representative of the buyer, given the trainer worked for the manager, and the manager’s long-time friend owned the horse
3. A full review of the horse’s USEF records (this can be sourced by any USEF member)
4. A full review of the horse’s medical records provided from their veterinarian of record (if the owner declines to provide medical records, this is key information to have)
5. Try more than one horse if it’s your first time purchasing a horse - you can learn a lot that way about what’s out there and what’s fair for the price.
6. A thorough understanding by the parents of what a gamble horses are financially.

Two Stories:

1. A wealthy businessman was building an animal farm, and was looking for trail horses with prescribed colors and sizes. 

The trainer found a great horse online, one state away, that fit the envisioned picture and price point.  She spoke to the seller and watched videos, and made the purchase. 

The horse later arrived and to her disappointment, he simply could not be caught, seemed to be afraid of men, was not quite sound, and was much greener than she thought. Moreover, the veterinarian assessed his age to be closer to 14 years rather than six. 

2. An amateur was learning to ride Western, and wanted a medium sized horse. Her trainer found a gorgeous black QH advertised at 15.1H on Facebook. She talked to the owner and understood it to have been lightly started, but decided that was ok. She bought the horse within an hour of finding the ad, worried surely someone else would snap him up. 

When the horse arrived, she found it to be nothing like the photos or description. It was only 14.3 hands - the dreaded ‘no-mans land’ of horse heights. He had an unsightly white spot on one side that had clearly been strategically hidden by saddle pads in photos, with a short neck, dropped back and was basically unstarted. 

In both cases, the trainers thought they were finding great deals in young animals that they expected to have all the fundamentals to make terrific mounts once fully trained. Instead, they found the horses were much greener than they thought, and moreover, had conformation faults, height discrepancies, and other issues that would impact their sellability. In the first case, the client returned the horse to the trainer, who lost money attempting to rehabilitate the horse and she eventually gave him away. In the second case, the trainer got lucky and was able to remake and resell the horse to a great home - but not without great stress and frustration along the way. 

These situations could have been avoided by:

• Seeing the horse in person. 
• If you are going to buy a horse from an online ad, sight unseen… well don’t. At least, not unless you have done so successfully before, or are working with someone who has. If you do, you should be willing to lose every penny you invest - and be stuck with the horse. 

That said, for experienced professionals, there are strategies that can be used to properly vet horses in online ads that are far away. These include doing a video call with the owner to see if the horse matches the ad photos/videos, making a decision over a longer time frame to avoid pressure situations (we recommend at least two weeks), and getting copies of x-rays and medical records from the seller for review prior to purchase. At least in this way, you can verify some of what is described in the ad.