Right, some how the less experienced buyer should have known, when the very experienced seller is saying the horse is fine.
Sure, buyer beware, but sellers should not be excused when they are this experienced.
At some point, people are new and they have to believe someone, or should we just not allow newbies to ever do anything because no one can be trusted and they have to beware and figure it out on their own?
Only if you’re seeing other things.
Kissing spine red flags to me are a “feeling” and an overall picture vs just (for example) an uphill trot. The ridden videos of the horse in question are the ones that scream “vet” to me, while the liberty video isn’t too worrying by itself.
(It is relevant that this horse did not come straight off the track, however, and spent some time at a non-racing home before being marketed here by Benchmark. If he had been straight off the track, the liberty video wouldn’t have bothered me much at all on its own.)
But…Jessica doesn’t think kissing spine is an issue, and thinks that anyone with a KS horse that has a problem just doesn’t know how to ride it properly. Totally ignoring or being unable to pick up a “typical” KS presentation seems to fit in well with this viewpoint of hers…
I understand your point, but it’s very obvious that the horse is physically uncomfortable somewhere, even if you think kissing spine isn’t a “thing”. That simply shouldn’t be missed buy a seller that sees 100+ horses a year.
I totally agree. I think it’s clear that Jessica’s stand on the KS thing and what she posted earlier (that I quoted above) is exactly the blind spot that’s the issue here.
If she works with the same handful of vets for vetting it would also make sense that there is consensus around not trusting back x rays and then discouraging them.
I don’t agree with this. The horse’s behavior was variable (for worse in the canter, for better from the first ride to the second), and as @beowulf says there are many possible explanations for the signs he was showing. A handful of rides is just not enough for a seller (or a buyer) to make the kind of definitive assessment you are talking about. That kind of assessment should be made by a veterinarian, something that this seller strongly recommends all over her website and marketing.
You are right that at some point everyone is new and has to believe someone, but that someone should never be a seller, no matter how good or bad their reputation. This is not horse-specific advice - if you are going to drop thousands of dollars on a purchase of any kind, it is common sense that you should consult a neutral, educated third party.
In this case, there should have been two, if not three of those third parties. A local vet doing the PPE, ideally your home vet with whom you already have a relationship (who could say things like “based on the videos, you should look at his back, even if this other vet doesn’t seem to think so”), and a trainer. We know this buyer has a trainer, and I don’t understand why there is no comment on the their involvement. The trainer could have identified things such as “that is a very competent rider on that horse, and it still doesn’t look wholly easy - perhaps we should look for another beautiful horse who is somewhat more straightforward”.
The seller in this case went so far as to explicitly recommend a third party (a PPE), but bringing in all three of these third parties is really the sole responsibility of the buyer. If you have any business looking at purchasing an OTTB, especially one with this level of obvious firepower, you should be well aware of that responsibility.
Buyer beware, indeed.
I don’t have a lot of experience with KS (1 horse who was managed very carefully for it.)
What I see when I watch the video is a horse that’s clearly NQR behind. I see the wringing tail and the bunny hop canter.
I wouldn’t assume that the seller’s explanation of it being behavioral was 100% the case, but I probably would have looked at hocks, stifle and SI first, because in my experience, those are more likely.
I would not have bought the horse without a more thorough PPE, including rads and maybe blocking the hind end.
I think the fact the horse is big, flashy and good looking made it was easy to think you were getting a WB for an OTTB price.
Whatever the cause of the discomfort, the horse look like he requires a very tactful, diplomatic ride.
Sorry for the poor horse with a tough diagnosis, sorry for the buyer having buyer’s remorse.
I’m just not willing to tar and feather the seller, and I think it’s ridiculous to claim she knew about the KS. She knew the horse was uncomfortable, she thought it was behavioral. She disclosed that. She didn’t have it worked up because she runs 100s of horses through her program.
There are differences between buying a purpose bred sport horse from a breeder and an OTTB from a reseller, and it’s not just the $$$. What the seller can reasonably know about the horse is another.
But the seller admits here that they had this horse for longer than a couple of rides.
Replying because I don’t want you to think I am ignoring you (and it was a fair thing to point out on your end) but I can’t state my own opinion any better than @McGurk just did so I’ll just quote them:
Of all the people to quote I think I’ve been quite gracious of this seller of the course of the thread and simply indicated that a sellers apprehension about KS seriousness likely rubs off on the vets that see dozens of her horses annually. Nothing nefarious. We are all people and water cooler talk can subconsciously influence recommendations.
Or… she works with the same handful of vets because we don’t have that many to choose from here.
We are very lucky to have the excellent vets we have. But there aren’t a lot and they are VERY busy. This isn’t a situation where everyone is in cahoots or indoctrinating each other.
Some of the non-local vets who get utilized for PPEs travel quite a distance from the Fair Hill, MD/Chester County, PA area. They have no skin in the game, they are just doing a job for their existing clients from that area.
(If you can’t tell I’m defensive of my wonderful vet, who I don’t think was any way associated with this particular horse but does enough work on the farm that I don’t want them getting mixed up in this)
Yes you sound defensive. I don’t think anyone is being intentionally nefarious.
I think that vets are people and Jessica is probably someone they know well and she sounds very personable. There are probably dozens of interactions each month and lots of candid conversations around “man someone passed on dobbin because of xyz did you hear he’s now going prelim”. Over the years views tend to converge naturally. If she’s had tons of horses who have outperformed X-rays and gone through the frustration of a normal seller x the volume she sells, vets are probably empathetic. It seems like a normal inevitable process that these conversations influence you. I think that’s why the track vet I used in Ocala for a PPEs was much more relaxed about something that made my local performance vet pause. No one was trying to be deceitful. It was just the natural evolution of beliefs, experiences, and exposure to films vs performance.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion.
My first hand experience with the parties says you’re completely off base in this particular situation.
But hey. Maybe that’s what happened.
This is not a fresh off the track horse that was in and out of the sales barn. It was a horse represented to be from a friend, for which the seller represented she knew its riding history, and it was in the barn long enough to address some sort of physical issue and be in the seller’s training program for some period of time… but apparently even afterwards it went around like we see in the video and representations were made that the seller opined what we see was behavioral. Which I think means one or two things…
Either the seller isn’t as good a judge of soundness and the impacts of kissing spines as she holds herself out to be in her posts where she discusses how she is right and buyers are wrong about being nervous about buying a horse with KS.
Or
She could see this horse was going weirdly and didn’t care whether it was physical or not but made representations that it was behavioral without doing sufficient due diligence to determine if that was true.
I’m not tarring and feathering anyone here or calling them evil. But someone who sees hundreds of horses and doesn’t see a physical issue here is either not that good at spotting back issues (and so perhaps might refrain from lecturing other people) and/or doesn’t care (and so might refrain from making assertions about why a horse goes the way it does).
I have a lot of thoughts …
I do think KS is overdiagnosed and a lot of horses that have no apparent issues under saddle and are to be happily doing their jobs will have ‘abnormal’ radiographs. I’d even say that sometimes (not always, not even most times, but it does happen) problems that truly are “behavioral” due to poor riding/training get blamed on KS when the answer is actually that the horse is unhappy with the way he’s being ridden and managed.
That said, the horse in the video is obviously very uncomfortable. Unless he was going a whole lot differently by the time his buyer came across him, honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked for him to have acted explosively under saddle, based solely on his way of going in the video. I have to think there was some element of being overly inclined to look past it since he’s big, black, and flashy-moving with a pretty neck. Would anyone have been so quick to accept at face value that the horse only needed a rider who wasn’t fearful, and buy with only a limited PPE if it was an average-looking 15.1h chestnut mare?
It’s also entirely possible that he wasn’t explosive under saddle when Jessica had him, and that the fussing and hopping behavior only escalated to become fully dangerous when he started being ridden by a different rider. Without being there, there is no way of knowing and it’s all just “he said, she said”. However, that “first ride” video sure doesn’t look like a horse that was in regular work and going well. Maybe the friend that had him before was just hacking him around a bit and not asking him to do anything?
Hopefully the horse is one of the ones that does have improvement after surgery.
I also had the experience of a vet in that general area discouraging me from back x-rays when I asked for them during a PPE. He also said they weren’t needed. Maybe it’s the same vet but even if it isn’t, that’s 2 examples right there. FWIW, horse also turned out to have back issues.
I promise you, in that situation, I would have said “I want back xrays” followed by “I’m buying, let’s go.” followed by “Would you prefer I get another vet?”
If for some reason, I went ahead with the purchase without the xrays and the horse turned out to have back problems, I would blame myself, then the vet. I would not be blasting the seller on social media claiming they had to had known about the issue.
ETA: I also think that the trainer who was advising the buyer has some culpability in this situation. If they had concerns about the way the horse was moving; they should have pushed for back xrays, or at least a more thorough workup.
Years ago, I accidentally bought a horse (out west, not from the seller mentioned ) that ended up having Wobblers, among other issues. I knew the trainer and trusted her. I did a two week trial, brought my own trainer to see him, used a vet outside the area. Stupidly I did have a few concerns about the horse but my trainer loudly dismissed me, the trainer selling politely said she did not have the same concerns but I was welcome to do anything on a PPE that made me feel comfortable. The vet I used dismissed my concerns. So that was three professionals that I honestly trusted. Not one of them, was acting nefarious, they just didn’t see what I saw.
To be fair in less than a year when I started seeing real neurologic symptoms, The internal specialist at the hospital passed him on a neurological exam and we almost took him home. But they decided to lunge him one more time before I left, he fell there and we got the diagnosis.
I told the trainer selling him, not because I blamed her, But as a professional I wanted her to have that data for future horses. She had some siblings of this horse in training that she was helping sell. She said there was another instance with another horse that made her uncomfortable. So she sent all the siblings back to the owner stating that she wanted full vet workups and all of them if she was going to represent them.
She was very appreciative that I told her. And the way she handled it actually encouraged me to work with her again in the future, for training. And I wouldn’t it hesitate to buy from her again.
But the larger point, is yes I should have been more assertive in my concerns at the PPE. But I felt like I was an over paranoid person in the midst of a bunch of professionals that didn’t see what I saw nor had worries. Lesson learned but I still struggle at times when a professional is dismissing my concerns. I have no medical degree after all.
Editing to add: if I had a dollar for everytime in my 25 plus years in horses that I had to really push for X-rays or diagnostics from various vets including from CSU, I wouldn’t be rich but I would sure be able to buy some nice saddle pads or something!
The seller posted what, half a dozen videos? Since everyone on COTH could see 5 seconds in that the horse had kissing spines and was lame, isn’t that a buyer issue? The seller wasn’t hiding anything. There were multiple videos. I do think that many “hot fit horse moving to new job” issues can be behavior OR soundness.
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