THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN SHOPPING FOR A HORSE
There are so many factors to consider when looking at a horse that it is beyond the scope of anything I could write on this site. I’m not going to discuss conformation because there are hundreds of articles, books and dvds that already cover that aspect of choosing a horse. But if you are looking for a credible source of information about structure and function of a horse, for my money you can’t go past Deb Bennett’s series on conformation, which is available through the Eclectic Horseman web site.
Before even looking at Horse Deals or classifieds you need to be clear on what you want your horse to be capable of doing. There are basic things to consider which can help you narrow and focus your search. If you want a horse for serious showjumping then you probably need to look at horses around 16hh and above. If you want to jump at lower levels than most likely 15hh hands and above will suit you fine. If you want to play polo, 14.3-15.2hh is a good size. If you want to pleasure ride then size won’t matter too much. You have to narrow your options by knowing your needs.
Most people have an idea of the breed they are wanting. But don’t be too fixed in your ideas about this either. It is my experience that there is as big a difference of horses within a breed as there is between breeds. You can find Appaloosas that make wonderful dressage horses and Warmbloods that can work a cow. Percherons that can jump brilliantly and Arabs that can drag logs out of your back paddock.
For me, if a horse has good enough conformation that it won’t hinder the work, a horse’s mental attitude is the most important factor in choosing a horse. By that I mean, the build of a horse does not need to be perfect or even close – it just needs to be okay for doing the job. I have never had a perfectly put together horse, but I have never had a horse that has disappointed me. Of course, the higher the level of performance you might require of a horse, the more particular you should be abut conformation. But plenty of horses have been highly successful performers despite some serious conformation faults.
When checking out a horse for a good mind, the training it has had is only a small part of the equation. I look for trainability. This often means different things to different people. But to me it means the horse’s aptitude to search through a problem. It’s how they handle a problem that they don’t know the answer to. If there is a training problem that is not too monumental such as a hard mouth or lacking in focus or crookedness etc., I tend to not pay too much attention to these because I know I can help most horses be better. But if you are not sure that you can, then don’t ignore these issues. If you are not able to offer a horse better training than he already has had then you had better be sure he has had really good training to begin with. If he has had good training, he will always come back to it as you also become a better horse person.
In regards to determining if a horse has a very trainable mind you can try teaching him something he doesn’t already know and see his reaction. Of course, you need to get the owner’s permission before doing that first. But things that are easy such as backing over a pole or leading from a rope around a front leg or dragging a log or tarpaulin make good tests. The aim is to see how he handles the pressure of learning a new or difficult task. You want to take him out of his comfort zone and watch what happens. See how he handles this new experience. Does he panic? Does he pretend nothing is happening? Does he look confused, but tries to do something (even if it’s the wrong thing first off)? If he appears to be steady but looking for a way out of the pressure, then I think you might have a winner – he has a searching type of attitude and the “try” has not been killed in him by the training he has had.
There are plenty of exercises you could try to teach a horse to test his temperament. If it is a foal, most foals have not been taught to back up on the lead so you can try teaching him that for a few minutes and gauging his reaction. Remember, you are not testing how good he does the exercise, but how he handles the pressure of something new. With older horses you can try to teach him to back up by lifting his tail or to line up on a fence next to you as you stand on the fence or teach a step or two of Spanish walk or back over a ground pole one foot at a time. Anything that is different for the horse will suffice.
I have a couple of warnings with regard to looking at horses to buy. Firstly, never ever get on a horse to ride unless you have (i) seen somebody else ride him first, or (ii) you have had plenty of time to work with him on the ground to be sure he is safe to ride. I have come across incidents where the owner made excuses for not riding the horse they were selling, but letting the prospective buyer get on first. This is a big mistake and more than once has led to bad accidents.
The second warning I have is to be wary of super quiet horses. Some might think I am talking about drugged horses, but I am not. I refer to those horses that the owner jumps on in the paddock with just a rope around it’s neck and trots it up the hill even though it hasn’t been ridden for 3 years – it doesn’t shy or even look at anything. Sometimes horses like this are either totally shut down and a ticking time bomb just waiting for a tourist in Stockholm to blow his nose before the horse explodes OR they don’t care about pressure. In either case the horse is pretty troubled. In the first instance, horses that are seriously shut down carry a lot of worry that they shove deep down inside like a pressure cooker. Sometimes they wake up and you find yourself suddenly riding a hurricane. In the case of a horse that does not care about pressure, you can find them very difficult to train. They may be super quiet and calm, but if they don’t care much about pressure how do you get them to care when you ask them to go forward or to stop or turn? In training pressure is used to motivate a horse to try something – that’s how training works. But a horse who is highly unmotivated by pressure is pretty hard to train.
But in any case, if you do the check I recommended regarding testing their trainability you should detect whether or not the horse you are looking at is shut down or doesn’t care.
Lastly, it is always a good idea to get a third party who has no interest in the horse or doesn’t care whether you buy it, to look at the horse with you. Sometimes we fall in love with a horse for no rational reason and even though we see lots and lots of faults and reasons not to buy the horse, our hearts speak loudly. A third party who knows their stuff can help you avoid this pitfall of buying a horse when your brain is in hopeful mode. When you purchase a horse you need to be confident that it is the horse for you and not buy it hoping that one day it will be the horse for you. You need to love a horse for what he is and not for what you hope he will be one day. It’s a bad idea when you marry a person and it’s a bad idea when you buy a horse.