Make sure you have someone around to video tape the encounter with people who answer craigslist ads for horses. Without this valuable evidence, no one will ever believe you when you tell them about it.

If any of your potential buyers makes reference to just having seen any horse movie, ie; Black Beauty, Seabiscuit, National Velvet, or any other, tell them you have sold all your horses or have the plague. This is the buyer who knows nothing about horses other than the 3 times they rode on their Grandpa’s farm when four years old, and just remembered horses when they saw the latest movie. Beware, the have the potential to make you pull out your hair while they compare every one of your horses to the movie horse or Grandpa’s plow horse. None of your horses can measure up to their imagined ideal.

I have been known to sell a horse from time to time. But I don’t make money on the deal. Just doesn’t happen. But I was accused today of “flipping horses to make a buck.” “She gets free horses and then turns around and sells them.” That’s not exactly how it works.

Generally I will get a phone call that so and so has a horse that has not been ridden in 4 years, if ever. Or there is this horse they picked up that is under weight, can’t be caught, bites, kicks, is maybe pregnant, is probably still a stallion, has never had its feet done or a halter on it, is so spoiled it runs people over to get fed, whatever. Somehow these people get MY phone number and they have been “told” that I will take this miserable excuse of a horse. No one ever admits a name of who gave them my name and number. I think there is a secret listing somewhere for horse sucker.

If you know anything about horses, you know you never make any money on a “free” horse. The most expensive horse I have ever owned was a free horse. A free horse is usually in desperate need of farrier care, and it is never a single trim, and oh look how nice their feet are, visit. This is an every 4 week, For several months, major over haul on a horse that objects, strenuously. He has never had his feet done before, and doesn’t care if he can walk. Hey, just throw that hay closer, or better yet get me a round bale and a bag of grain.

They also have never had their teeth floated. It then takes the whole bottle of happy horse injectable and 4 large men and power tools to get this horse having teeth that would not look like something a shark would be proud to own.

Next we get to deal with weight issues. Most free horses are very underweight. Usually with rain rot or even, shudder, lice. So I get to pour food down them, after their teeth are floated, by the bag and bale-ful. Dewormer is next on the list, along with supplements that cost as much as some people (like me) make in a week. Every once in a while, someone will have a 9 year old unbroken, overweight, spoiled, pushy, (but he is registered!) gelding that is ready to founder. Those are the funny ones. They cannot understand why they can’t sell their fat obnoxious, dangerous untrained gelding. “But he is registered!” (But don’t get to close, he will bite you ‘but he is only looking for treats’).

So I get to pour feed, training, time, and of course love, into this horse for the next 2 to 9 months, then I may find him or her the perfect home. I sell these ‘free’ horses for $300 to as much as $1000 depending on the horse. How much is full care board and training? I don’t make any money on these horses. No one could. Most horses I end up with are ones who would likely go to the meat man. A few, I admit to having bought off the meat truck because I thought there was hope of them becoming more than dog food with a little time and effort.

I had a friend get in touch with me last night. She has an Appy gelding that hasn’t been rode in 3-5 years. He is a little underweight. Maybe needs his teeth done and a retrain. Wants to know if I will take him, see if you can get him rideable. Sure I say. I like Appies. Yup, sucker, that’s me.

I guess I am a horse trader, horse flipper, whatever. (Call me what you want, just don’t call me with your 3 legged one eyed, underweight horse, cuz knowing me I would try an fix him). If that is what I am, they wear old boots, drive an older truck, and generally have broken nails and nicks on their hands from fixing fence on the cheap. Cause there is no money in it!

So I am called up one day and asked if I can come ride a friend’s new horse. She tells me she bought this gelding at the Hermiston sale. He is a registered Quarter horse, and she saw him ridden through the ring. He had been quiet and had impressed her with his composure at the sale, which is loud and has the smell of fear and illness. She brought him home and let him settle in a few days and when she went to saddle him up to ride he was acting “weird” so she wanted me to come check him out.
These kind of calls are the kind I get that make me want to say things like, sorry, I have to go to Tunisia for work and wont be available for the next 2 months. But no, my curiosity is up. I seem to always forget what happened to that damn cat.
I get to Lacey’s house and see a rather pretty Buckskin stallion in her smaller arena. After moving to this place after her Father died, she decided to board horses. She had 24 acres of nice pastures. All separated into 1.5 acre areas, with a half dozen 1/4 acre runs.
I go up and check the buckskin over. He seems very well mannered, and accepts a treat I toss into the arena for him. I give him another scratch and go knock on the door. Lacey and I exchange pleasantries and then I ask her about the gelding she bought. She tells me about watching him be ridden through the sale, how he ignored all the noise and other horses. He was really quiet and hardly even moved around, except when urged to do so. He mostly stood very quietly while they un-tacked him and then jumped back on him bareback. She decided he was the kind of horse she needed as she had been out of horses for several years and was basically starting over. She still had her old mare, but she was arthritic and was just a pet for the kids to occasionally be led around on.
When she had went out the day before to try to ride him, he had been much more animated, had not been very willing to stand still to be saddled, and hopped around so much when she was trying to mount she had become intimidated and had called me. While unsaddling him he had even pulled off the saddle pad himself and had flapped it around before tossing it aside.
I told her to show me the horse. She leads me out to the Buckskin Stallion. I turn and explain that she either brought the wrong horse home, or she did not understand the sale information on the horse, as this is a stallion. She told me he cant be a stallion because he was in with her mare and didn’t try to “do anything” except talk to her, like any new horse. And she was sure the guy selling him had said he was a gelding.
The buckskin as if to prove a point, starts strutting around ‘proudly’ proving his ability to be as manly as any other stallion, while parts of him are at attention. Where as Lacey’s eyes become the size of dinner plates and she makes no, no, no, noises shaking her head rapidly in denial.
“But he was so nice and quiet when he was in the sale yard. He was even quiet and nice when I went and pulled him from the pasture.”
She says he had been turned out with the mares in the main pasture for 2 days when he first came home; the boarders’ mares. Seems like she was going to have to explain the birds and the bees to those who had mares out in the common pasture. I am trying not to chuckle.

I sigh hiding my grin, and tell her the horse was probably drugged at the sale, and when she pulled him out of the pasture, he was probably tired from 2 days with a herd of mares. I will do an evaluation and we will see what he does know, and what kind of training he has, and what he may need.
Buffalo Joe, his registered name, is easily caught. Especially by me the one who had thrown him nummies, and had known the right place to scratch.
He has had some handling, and knows I mean business. He is really smart and keeps his attention on me the whole time. I am a bit impressed, but I also know there must have been a reason they drugged Joe.
I get out her saddle, and immediately set it aside and go grab one out of my truck. For one thing, he needed a saddle with full quarter horse bars as he was much wider than her old mare. For another thing, My ass was not going to fit into a 14″ barrel saddle with room to wiggle or bail fast if I needed to if he decided to be an ass.
He stands still and I get him saddled easily enough. He does not stand as still as a finished well behaved horse, but he is supposedly 4 and may not have had all the ground work he should have. I walk him a bit, do some ground driving and he knows a bit. He even lunges both ways and is giving to me and getting into the work. He has had some training and is enjoying this. Maybe he was only drugged so he would not get too wound up at the sale? Warning bells should have went off in my head, but instead I was relaxing.
I decide I am going to get up on him. By now several boarders have shown up, as well as a curious neighbor. They are all pulling up lawn chairs and chatting, watching “the expert” evaluate this horse. So I have an audience of about 9 people and Lacey.
I grab a cinder block, as I have an artificial left knee, and Joe is about 16hh. I grab the reins and a hunk of mane and swing a leg over Joe. I had almost got into the saddle when it came up to meet me. Hard. I managed to keep the reins and a big handful of mane I had ripped out. The tearing of the mane was an extra power source that made access to his auxiliary batteries, like those toys or flashlight you buy that has the plastic thing between the batteries and the main switch. Or as my daughter said, a rip cord, only I had no parachute.
He didn’t buck. There is no word for what this horse did to my ass. He jumped sideways, he did things cartoon horses do . I remember a cartoon movie when I was a kid about a cowboy raised by coyotes or wolves who meets a girl and she decides to ride his horse on their wedding day and the horse bucks her to the moon, It occurs to me I may be visiting her very soon.
He slips and goes down, I feel my foot hit the ground and the stirrup and the horse’s weight twist my ankle, I feel something pop. Now I am mad and determined that I am going to win this battle. I am not a fancy rider most of the time. I have to concentrate to be a pretty rider, but I have been on a horse since before I could walk and not much can buck me off once I set my mind to staying put. Also there is the audience. I try not to let that influence me, but it does.
Joe sunfishes, and I stay on, he rears then bucks, I stay on. He is covered in sweat and so am I. He races around the small arena and stops abruptly and throws down his head and bucks hard forward, planting his front legs with his head between them. I manage to stay on even though I am slammed in the back of the head by his ass and my neck feels dislocated. I kick him in the sides viciously, only then realizing I only have one boot still on. He is startled and takes a step forward. I hear “good boy” come out of my mouth, wondering about how I said that to this horse I wanted to strangle, then eat with BBQ sauce, after I get out of the hospital anyway.
His ears pricked up though. I said it again. “Good boy……Walk out.” The same command I gave him when ground driving him. He takes a few tentative steps. He looks at me, and I look at him. I pat him on the shoulder. I squeeze my leg a bit and say, “walk out boy.” We walk around the arena about 20 steps. I pat him on the shoulder making much over him, telling him what a good boy he is. I decide to get off and stop on a good note.
I step off and when my right foot hits the ground I scream and collapse to the ground, having forgotten about my broken ankle. I scare him and he starts jumping around stomping all over me. I woke up in the hospital and not the moon, which I guess is better than I saw this turning out. I still had some mane hairs wrapped up in my fingers of my left hand. I had 2 broken ribs, a broken ankle, a concussion and whiplash.
2 months later, I went out and got on Buffalo Joe again. No one else had any intention of getting on him, so when I was better I felt it was my job. He didn’t even try to buck with me again. A month after I finished his training Lacey sold Joe as a Stallion to a very nice woman from Montana who wanted a stallion to show and breed. Lacey was too afraid to try to ride him after seeing the events of my first ride on him.
There were 7 very cute foals at Lacey’s place next spring. Even her old Arthritic mare had a cute little Buckskin Colt. I did not offer to break him out when he was old enough.

I have not been feeling up to writing for a while, was sick for a time. Now I am feeling better and the words are starting to flow again.
I was feeling pretty good this morning, fed the horses, took my friend to work at a new job, dropped the boy off at school….Things were going great. Came home and cleaned the house. Cleaned the bathrooms, dusted, vacuumed. the works. Even washed the dog bed covers. Yes, I only have one dog, and yes, she has 2 beds. Sigh. I get all done and decide the house smells like dog. Um…. No, the dog smells like dog. Time to wash the dog. I decide I am going to be all prepared. I put on a bathing suit, mix the shampoo with water and put it and the rub a dub dub dog scrubber ( I kid you not, that is what it is called,) in the shower in preparation. I get out the old towels and get them all ready. We are set.

I then decide that brushing her to get rid of all the extra loose hair will make clean up easier. Sounds like a good idea, right? Worked 40 minutes and got off a good bit of hair. Now we are really ready!

My dog is a German Shepard and though well trained is spoiled rotten, and weighs a good 90 pounds or so. She doesn’t weigh as much as me, but she has 2 more legs for leverage and is pretty sure the bath is a really, really bad idea. I should have listened to her.

I finally get her into the shower stall and am getting myself in with her. I am getting worn out already. The opposite shower door is open a tiny crack, she gets her nose in there and flings it into me and bolts. I get a really nice bruise on my hip. Argh!

Again, I get the dog into the shower after using a zip tie to make sure the opposite door cannot be opened.

I Scrub and scrub poor Grey and am sure I was in a delusional state when I thought I was brushing off all the loose hair. Either that or the dog gets wet as a protective action it sheds all the wet hair. Handfuls and handfuls of wet dog hair. I am scooping it out of the drain and flinging it onto a pile on the seat in the shower. It will eventually fill up half a plastic grocery bag. Do German Shepard’s have that much hair? I took a whole grocery bag of hair off her earlier, but it was all dry and fluffy. Where did this all come from? She certainly doesn’t look to have lost any hair at all!

I am rinsing all the shampoo off and she decides to start shaking. More hair. All over the walls and shower doors. And me. I look like I have not shaved my legs since the Paleolithic. After getting her rinsed off and trying to get as much water out of her coat as possible, which has become 20 times thicker somehow, even after losing 30 pounds of hair, I let her out of the shower and try to towel her off. She is still shaking massive amounts of water and hair. Now it is covering the bathroom counters, doors, walls and cupboard doors.

I towel her off, using all 7 towels, all now soaking and covered with hair. I do not want to use my good towels on her so this is as good as it is gonna get. She seems drier. Not dry but dry enough when she shakes, there is only the sound of flapping jowls and ears and not the sound of a power washer spraying the walls.

I let her out of the bathroom so I can try to clean up the once pristine bathroom. I wipe off the counter and cupboards first so no water spots, then scrape all the hair form the shower. Then I take a shower again to remove the smell of dog and the hair. Then I clean the shower again. That makes 3 times today! I am exhausted. I finally get the bathroom clean and am thinking a nap sounds like a fine idea. It is only 10 am but I got up at 4am and I am telling myself I deserve a nap. I have worked hard and am wiped out.

Then I see the rest of the house I just cleaned and vacuumed this morning. I nearly fainted. Grey must have decided she was not nearly dry enough. She has rolled on every carpet, leaving a nice coating of hair, (More hair? Really?) all over the carpets. She also seemed to have walked back and forth along the couches covering the front of them as well. Those dog bed covers I had washed and used fabric softener on? Yep, you are right. She managed to cover those too.

Then I look out the kitchen window, and the 5 month old fillies have snuck out of the fence again and are helping themselves to a mid morning snack. I get them corralled and heave my tired butt back into the house.

I decided to sit down, have another cup of coffee instead of a nap. Then I write this down to share with you all, and soon, but not too soon, I will get up and clean the house again.

But the dog looks and smells great! Until I let her outside again anyways.

Moral to this story?

Hire a housekeeper, take the dog to the groomer and go get a mani-pedi or a stiff drink!

I get a call the other morning, these people have seen my facebook page and need some help with a horse they have and want me to come evaluate her prior to them selling her. I have some free time and it is not far away, a couple extra bucks for an evaluation are always welcome. I head on over, it sounds fairly easy. I am so freaking stupid some times.
The Mare is very cute, not the greatest conformation, but passable. She has a really cute head and neck, but she has a look in her eye that tells me there is less sugar than spice in this little girl. They had told me they thought they should be able to get $4000 for her, I am halving that right off the bat.
I ask the couple about her back ground. The mare was register able, but they had never bothered, they still have all the paperwork though. I explain at her age this is not cheap and easy, so most people will not be interested in her for her papers as it will cost them a fair bit of change and so she therefore would not be sold at the price of a registered horse. They are not happy about this and argue the point. I finally have to explain, if the mare as a registered horse is worth $2000, you don’t get $2000. Because to register her it will cost the new owners $600, and so that means she would have the value of a grade mare. They can try to register her themselves and pay out the $600 and then try to get $2000 for her, and may only get $1200, then they have only gotten $600 for her, so they are better off trying to sell her for $1000 if she rides well and then use the fact they can register her if they want to as a selling point.
They are needing to sell her as they are moving out of state. They bought her when she was young, then sent her off for training for 60 days to a woman in Scottsdale when she was 3. The woman charged $800 a month for board and training and they hoped to be able to get some money back when they sold her. (This generally never happens, just so you know.) Nothing was ever really done with her once she came back, she had not been ridden since leaving training. I asked them why they did not contact the woman who did the training when they were getting ready to move, the man replied that they had wanted to, but she was no longer there and they had been unable to find her. Also the people at the stable did not want to talk about her or provide any information. This sounds a little fishy to me, but I let it pass for now.
They tell me they cannot get a halter on her and that is why her feet are long. They are really not too bad, she has the type of feet that wear pretty well and have no major chips or cracks. Her feet are a bit long, but really look ok. The mare will go into the trailer to have her grain, so she has been to the vet for her shots and de-wormer, the vet just did them while she was in the trailer through the side door. I tried to go up to the mare to even pet her, and she was having none of it. I asked about that and they said they didn’t pet or scratch her as someone had told them she would get spoiled. (Yes, my horses are spoiled rotten.) I felt a little bad for her at this point, there were no other horses there, and none close by, and the owners did not even have a dog for company for her. So instead of chasing her around or roping her, we put grain in the trailer and she hops right in. I opened the side door and put a halter on her, then after she had her grain, I let her out with her halter and lead on. She fussed around for a bit, but not really trying to be bad or anything. I picked up her feet and she was actually pretty good about it. The man had some tools as he had taken the 2 week horse shoeing course thinking it would save them money if he could trim his own horses. So we cleaned up her feet a bit. The guy actually was not bad at trimming for only having taken the 2 week course.
I tied her up ad she fought it for a few minutes, but settled down after she found she could not get away. I started scratching her and trying to find her sweet spot and she acted like I was molesting her. I finally found she like having her belly scratched behind where the cinch went. She acted pretty ticklish in the cinch area for a horse that had 60 days training on her, but I figured she had not had anything done with her for 2 years so maybe she was just more ticklish than some. My estimation of my intelligence is rapidly declining as I write this. I should have had some inkling of what was coming.
I got out their saddle and it really fit her pretty well. They had bought it from the trainer. She acted pretty raw about the whole process of being saddled, but wasn’t mean, just antsy. I should have been using my brain at this point, but nope.
I walked her around until I got the hump out of her back, stopping to scratch her and tell her what a good girl she was. I took her over to the built in mounting block they had. So I throw my leg over her and realize immediately I should not have had the saddle on her, or me, or even the non existent dog. This horse had NEVER had anyone on her back before. She starts hopping around, she is confused and scared. I can’t step off her without scaring her more and potentially one of us getting hurt. It is not that easy when you are old like me to gracefully hop out of, and clear a saddle, when the horse is trying to buck and jumping around. If you admire older riders for staying on a bucking horse and riding it out, keep in mind it is because we are too old to get off easily. I figure I am in it for the long run at this point, so I keep talking to her in a calm voice. She has no balance and doesn’t even know how to buck right now, so basically she is just jumping around, stumbling and trying to figure out how I got up there and how to make me go away. She was like a perpetual motion machine. She kept going for what seemed like an hour but was probably only about 5 minutes. But if you have ever been on a fractious horse, 5 minutes is forever. She did one pretty good jump and came down wrong and went to her knees when she couldn’t balance. This scared her and she stopped hopping around. She stood there huffing and puffing like she had just ran a marathon, and I took this opportunity to hop off while she was holding still. I may have been stupid for getting up there, but all the jumping around had gotten my brain going again. Me hopping off actually didn’t spook her, which I took as a good sign.
The couple come over to us at this point and ask me why I had made her do all that, and why I didn’t just ride her? I turn and look at them unable to even speak yet and wondering what in the heck they were even thinking? After I catch my breath and loosen the mares cinch and give her a couple good scratches and turn to them and ask them why in the name of little green apples would they think I had “made” the horse do that? They both look a little confused.
Then I then ask some questions I was obviously too stupid to ask before I threw my leg over an untrained mare. “Did you ever watch this woman you paid to train your horse ride her? Did she ever send you video of her riding her? Did she say how many days a month she was actually going to ride her? Why would you pay someone $800 a month to do work for you and not make sure they actually were doing something? This mare has never had anyone on her back before, she has no idea how to balance weight, and was scared and confused. I would never have gotten on this poor girl if I had any idea she had never been ridden. You threw away your $1600 and it is a good thing you never tried to ride her!”
They really did not want to believe me, only me offering to video tape one of them getting on her made any impression at all and that was not much of one. Then a young cowboy wandered over, he was their neighbor who works at the local feed lot. He asks them what is going on and that he thought they had said this mare was broke? They say she was broke and then told him about sending the mare up to Scottsdale to be trained and how I was trying to tell them the mare had never been ridden or trained, and would he get on her? He shook his head no, and said he could see she wasn’t broke and there was no way he was getting on her. He asked them if the trainer was named such and such and they agreed it was the same one. He then goes on to tell them that that woman had actually been a fraud, having the same name of a big name trainer, she had went to several stables and using the name, taken in many horses for training, never doing much of anything, then moving on with a lot of other peoples money, tack and whatever else she could get a hold of including some horses she had taken in “trade” for her training. She had finally been caught, and was now in prison for fraud, theft, animal abuse and neglect, identity theft, breaching a contract, horse theft and many other things.
The owners are very upset about all this and I can understand their point of view. Then they ask what the mare is worth. I am kind of floored at this point and tell them whatever they can get is what she is worth. If they can find someone who wants an unregistered, unbroken, mare who is not socialized at all, they should take what they can get. They come back with “Can we get our $1600 back?” No I tell them, you threw that away. It is like you took your car in to a mechanic to get a new motor and never looked under the hood or tried to start the car for 2 years. You will be very fortunate to get $400 for her. They ask what I would give them for her? Nothing, I don’t want her. They tell me I can train her and make a lot of money. No, I tell them, I can’t. She isn’t worth that much even trained, she doesn’t have great bloodlines, she isn’t all that exceptional, she may come around to liking people but the horse market sucks. If I put 90 days into her, then I would maybe be able to sell her for $800 if I am lucky, and I would be out 90 days of hay, and 90 days of my work, besides the fact she isn’t thrilled with people and objected to me on her back. They are now mad at ME, and tell me to leave. Oh well.
What I have learned that I had forgotten, don’t believe anything anyone says about a horse, don’t get on a horse you don’t know with a saddle on or at all, always ask for your money for an evaluation up front or they may decide not to pay you, and bruises on your seat tend to hurt more than when you were young!