My Dad always used to say buying the horse was the cheap part, and he wasn’t even horsie!
When people ask me where I learnt to ride I can quite honestly say that from the moment I knew I was addicted to horses that I would beg borrow or steal a ride anyway I could, and that one day I would have a beautiful horse to call my own.
But it wasn’t just riding I was interested in. I wanted to know anything at all about these beautiful animals. I would read about them. I’d talk to friends about them. I’d watch others have riding lessons. I’d pick up poo, go to others houses, I read the Saddle Club books, the Thoroughbred series, My Friend Flicka, A Horse Called Butterfly, and pretty much any horse related book or magazine.
I was never a kid who desired competition riding. I had to put that out of my head, my family worked weekends, they didn’t want to float me anywhere on a regular basis and lacked a suitable car to do it often.
I’d happily tote along to a friend’s competitions. I’d watch them work their horses, plait them, clean them up with boot black and make them shiny. I went to Werribee as a dressage groom. I worked down the racetrack for a while as an 18yo stablehand. I rode horses at a neighboring farm when visiting family at Naracoorte. My Dad even once swapped someone a boat ride for a ride on their horse along the banks of Lake Bonnie. I rode a horse on a private trail ride in the Flinders Ranges and once they knew I could ride they let me go a LOT faster than their usual walk, trott ride. I had lessons with a variety of instructors along the way all who taught me something different.
My point is my education with horses has been so varied. It’s consisted of many people giving me tools and tricks and problem solving methods to help me become the person I am today. Even now I’m quite open to learning from others who may be more experienced than I am in their chosen field. I don’t think we ever stop learning and I read as much as I can to learn every single day.
The issue I want to address here today is about people are always in a hurry. I know, because that can well describe what I’m seeing a lot in horse ownership. I see people have an issue with their horse, become frightened and think they should sell it on. I see them thinking of moving on to the next horse before fixing the issues with their own. They think that this buy and sell roundabout will get them to improve their horse experience by the next one being better than the last. They want the fun now, not to wait the time it takes or to invest in themselves to learn the problem solving skills required to deal with their current one.
Some people who are so keen to own their own horses forget that these animals take years to learn about and understand. They want to ride, they want to own their own horse and quite often jump the gun to do so.
Owning a horse can be a huge financial strain to a family. It can eat up a huge percentage of a weekly income. To buy a horse and not have the knowledge of what that horse is going to cost you in time and $ can lead to so many problems.
I don’t think it matters how many times people are told that horses are expensive, they really don’t believe it. Just when you thought you had your horse budget sorted, your horse goes and puts its leg through a fence. Yay, budget out the window.
Sometimes people will have a few lessons and go and buy a horse they think may well be suited to them, but in fact it’s not. It may be that a seller told them the horse had particular good qualities and it didn’t or maybe they lack experience to discern this for themselves.
It can go well for a while. The horse may be quite responsive and have good character and ridden qualities learnt from the past owner. It might be well behaved and do all that it was described to do. But when things start to go down in a spiral whether due to the owner’s lack of knowledge, different methods of doing things or complete disregard to seller instructions then it really can be bad news for horse and potentially dangerous to the owner.