Before I became a full-time horsemanship clinician I was a full-time trainer with a very busy schedule. I would receive phone calls from people looking for a new horse and wanting some ideas of what to look for.
One of the most common questions I was asked was whether they should get a young green horse that had almost no handling and was a clean slate and not messed up by poor training.
Sometimes I was asked if they should breed a horse because nobody had ruined it before they got it. People wanted to avoid the pitfalls of inheriting problems from previous owners.
I get it. It’s sometimes more work to rehabilitate a horse that had been damaged by poor training than to start from scratch. I see nice horses that have been unnecessarily screwed up by early training. If somebody had not messed with them first, my job would have been a lot easier.
But here is the problem. If you are thinking that you don’t want a new horse with any problems you are thinking about it all wrong. The question should be are the problems that you inherit in a new horse within your ability to work through?
I believe it is a false premise to assume that training a horse you bred or buying a green horse will ensure you get a well-behaved horse. I say this because I believe that if you do not have the skills to fix problems in a horse, then you don’t have the skills to ensure you don’t put problems in a horse. You need to be just as good a horse person to solve issues with horses as you do to make sure you don’t screw them up.
Many people are better off buying a horse that has enough training to meet their skill set. Even if it means inheriting some problems that will require re-education. The real issue should not be whether you obtain a new horse with no training issues but rather are the problems it comes with are within your ability to work through.
Experience has taught me that relatively few people are equipped to work with a young, green horse from the beginning and not create problems.
In addition, an advantage of buying a horse already messed up is that you can blame somebody else for it!
