Only if friend arranges full ownership by buying him so old owner does not need to be consulted for major decisions including choosing between expensive procedures or pulling the plug. Nice if friend has or can get something else to ride if this one becomes unuseable.
I was doing 3’ Adult Hunters on first a 19 year old then a 24 year old lease horse. The 19 year old was put down right after the lease ran out due to a pasture accident but was just about worn out from the knees down, wouldn’t have been useful much longer and lacked the temperment for light riding, packing newbies and totally hated trails. It was a graceful exit for that tough old warrior.
The 24 year old made it to to 27 but was not rideable past 25 plagued by a series of infections and cellulitis racking up some serious bills before they let him go, they regret waiting so long.
Current retiree was still showing competitively at 2’6" at 21 but got a DDFT screwing around in the field late that year that was very slow to heal. Like over 2 years at 1/5 on a good day and probably still not 100% at the 5 year point. Other issues started creeping in lately too.
Yeah, younger horses CAN get into trouble but geriatric horses WILL and they don’t bounce back like younger ones.
Not popular to say this but most people really have no idea how old their horse really is unless they have the foaling date in papers or tattoo. Always been popular for sellers to underestimate the age of a younger horse (or just lie and knock a few years off), teeth are not accurate once the horse gets into teens, even before that can be off a year or two.
These days, like claiming it’s a “rescue”, some overestimate or over state age. That 24 year old I leased was claimed to be 32 when he packed his last lease kid over cross rails, that was the year after I had him and his true age, 25 according to his foaling date on his papers, was known to those people. They even got a little blurb in a local paper due to the 32 year old horse still winning. Hope that didn’t inspire anybody to aquire one assuming it would be useful.
I guess I’m trying to say watch out for anecdotal “evidence” justifying aquiring a geriatric horse for regular, long term use at any level. There’s several others around here claimed to be nearing 30 still in work that seem to have aged at twice the normal rate based on their claimed age in show records and the memories of other horse folk who knew them when. More dramatic I suppose…if they didn’t have a local history, they’d probably claim it’s a rescue as well.
I seem to recall a thread in OC years back about a 45+ horse getting alot of publicity that had a tattoo that was pretty worn but hinted otherwise.
Worth the thousand bags of Senior feed it took to keep him alive, believe me!