I think both the owner (who wasn’t at any of the vet visits) and even the leasee (who did attend her vet’s visit) just think it’s temporary soreness from stepping on rocks in the driveway. They don’t believe he’s lame which I think is odd given two DVMs said otherwise.
If he’s not stepping right in a sand arena isn’t something likely wrong?
The leasee probably would have paid for X-rays though if she didn’t just buy a horse and is ending her lease.
And that’s all well and good but if it’s been said numerous times the horse needs shoes and it hasn’t happened? I also would never do a trial lease paying the full amount up front. I honestly think you could find something better.
12 year old “prospect” that has never been in consistent work and has little coherent schooling. Stiff to warm up. May or may not have hoof issues. Unreliable owner.
One piece of really good advice I got on COTH about
not getting burned on horse purchases: research the seller rather than the horse. The discussion was about buying horses from video but still applies. The point was that that you find a breeder or trainer or even race track trainer that you can actually trust to be honest, and they will have too much self respect to knowingly sell you a crocked horse. I don’t trust the owner from what you’ve said and the leaser sounds naive.
If you are buying a prospect, especially an under educated middle aged horse, the saving grace should be that they are completely sound because they have never actually done much.
If you are buying a school master that has aches and pains and needs “maintenance” the saving grace should be that he knows and loves his job and you can have a few great years until he retires.
But buying a middle aged prospect with little education who is also already stiff in warmup seems pointless.
It is easy enough to find very nice OTTB that have retired sound from racing and just been lightly restarted and are 4 or 5 or 6.
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I’ve been involved in a lot of PPEs. Some good advice I’d apply to any of them:
Do you think you could easily sell him next week for the same price you paid? If the answer is no, he’s probably either priced too high or not worth the risk.
If you buy a horse that vets well and it doesn’t work out well for you, you can always find the horse the right person/job. If you buy a horse that doesn’t vet well, you’ll likely be stuck with him even if he’s not right for you.
What do you want to do with the horse? Everyone should try buy a horse that can do their intended job THE DAY THEY BUY it. Want to train a horse? Buy a prospect. Want to ride X level? Buy a horse doing that level if at all financially possible. Want to nurse a horse back to health and ‘see what it can do’ but don’t have huge specific goals? Then you can buy a horse with vet/farrier/neglect issues. (thankfully for their horses, more people than you’d think say yes to this) Be honest with yourself with what you really want your journey with your new horse to be.
It’s easy to fall in love with horses. That means both that its easy for your heart to want the one in front of you, but ALSO that it will be easy for your heart to fall in love with the next one too if you pass.
So the girl who is leasing has bought her own horse now but didn’t want to buy this horse or even just keep leasing him? That raises a lot of questions for me
This is one of the few threads where everyone posting has the same opinion: Don’t buy this horse.
I own a 13 year old horse with a history of lameness related to foot soreness and needing to be warmed up for 20 minutes before he gets going. I bought him at 5 years old because I was afraid of where he would end up and he had a good brain, plus I had a senior clinician assuring me it was just an issue of time and strength. At the time it made sense to take a risk on a ticking time bomb of a horse. I’m a vet and he had a built in retirement home, so I was ready with a backup plan. I now no longer do clinical equine vet work and that retirement home is no longer an option. He is semi-retired at 13 years old and only not completely retired because I have nothing else to ride and light work doesn’t hurt and may help. I pay full board because he can’t go on pasture board and be stomping at flies in the summer and he is a poor fit for your average retirement barn.
I tell you my story to add some weight to my words: Do. Not. Buy. This. Horse.
Unless you have money to burn, a personal barn to retire at, and want an expensive pasture ornament.
I love my horse but my choice has ended my riding for the foreseeable future while still leaving me with the stress of managing a chronically not-right horse.
Walk away.
Everyone’s shared a lot of good advice but I have to say this reply has struck me as particularly on point. The funny thing is, we were excited when we first saw the ad because we know the trainer who’s been working with the leasee and previously worked a little with the owner. He gave us some helpful information in the beginning about how the horse can be a bit of a slow mover but didn’t seem to attribute it to any physical ailment. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him since the PPE but haven’t been able to yet–not sure if it’s on purpose or he’s just typical trainer-schedule busy. According to the leasee, after the PPE he told her the horse “just needs a little time” warming up and didn’t seem too concerned.
Between him and the leasee we’ve been given a lot more info than might be typical. She even gave her vet clinic permission to share all his history with us. If it weren’t for them and we were only dealing with the owner, I don’t think we would have gone this far in the process.
The owner told our trainer she originally pulled his shoes because “he kept losing them.” That’s all we really know. Maybe she felt a barefoot horse would be a more attractive sell?
Based on social media history, she originally listed him a couple years ago for $20K which everyone pretty much said was crazy wishful thinking. Not surprisingly there weren’t many takers. He was at $10K when we saw the ad and we negotiated a price below $8k, which seems more in line with his experience and age.
Thank you for sharing this. That is useful information.
Can you tell me what type of history the horse had? Was it noticeable lameness or he just seemed a little off every now and then until it became more? What type of work/training did he do before the issues started to really manifest?
So the trainer placed her with the horse originally because she was looking for a ride and the owner couldn’t keep him. She cares for him but knows they are not a forever fit. I get that, sometimes you just don’t fully jive. I don’t think there was anything nefarious behind it. She also wants her own TB project to bring up so that’s why she ended the lease once she finally found a horse.
When we first inquired about the horse the trainer told us a working student rode him and said he was fun but she wouldn’t want to own him b/c he was slow moving. He also has a big trot that takes some getting used to. (According to the owner she stopped riding him bc she had a back injury and his gaits were too big for her).
But he’s moved well for my husband and slowness was never an issue, likely because husband can get more leg on him.
Doesn’t really raise any questions for me, a lot of people lease horses that aren’t a horse they would choose to buy. The last horse I leased didn’t have anything seriously wrong with him, and I appreciated having him to get my riding skills and fitness back up (mostly), but he just wasn’t a good fit long term. He was Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Right.
A horse that keeps losing shoes may have particularly brittle shelly feet. Some OTTB in particular are like that. They keep losing shoes and when the shoe comes off, typically you lose a chunk of hoof wall as well. The nail comes loose on one side and then he rips the shoe off losing a chunk on the more secure side. If the horse overtracks and doesn’t lift his front feet promptly enough he can step on the heels of his front feet and pull off the shoe.
This apparently is why horses lose shoes in mud. It’s not that the mud sucks off the shoe but that they tread on their front heels because their front end is slowed down.
Also horses that fall on the forehand but naturally track up tend to interfere or clip themselves or pull front shoes.
There are many threads here about trying to fix the problem. Wearing bell boots 24/7 or hoping a supplement or topical can improve hoof quality.
Anyhow, “always losing shoes” is not just a quirk. It’s a red flag that you might not be able to keep him shod even if you want and need to.
A horse that pulls a shoe and loses a chunk of hoof wall might need a month or more barefoot to regrow enough wall to be reshod and might well be NQR during this time.
You know even thought you didn’t say until later in the thread, I knew you must be looking at an OTTB just based on your description of this horse.
There aren’t a lot of OTTBs in the world that stay sound barefoot in work. I’m sure there are SOME and I’m sure like 10 people will now post that they have one, but I bet it also depends on your climate and what kind of work you are doing. It is certainly not happening where I am (New England aka rocky mud pit). I know a lot of people who sort of, struggle with soundness with their OTTB. They’re a little quirky. They get a lot of TLC, adjusting to shoeing, etc and their owners manage to keep them sound and in work and happy to a level that an AA desires. These are women who work full time and love their horse, and RIDE, and compete, but they do not have GOALS for moving up the levels or anything like that. I bet this horse goes in that category. I bet with a joint supplement or a course of adequan, and regular shoeing, this guy will be happy as a clam and moving much better in few months. BUT, I’d hardly call him a training level prospect with these kinds of issues, at 12.
If you will be happy giving this guy a good home, and bombing around BN, and think you talk the owner down on price because 8K sounds pretty high for a 1/2 lame OTTB that’s done not much, then go for it. If you want to move up the levels and have more serious aspirations then you definitely need to move on.
And in general, I think the rule should be that if you can combine the words “horse, saga, and purchase” in one sentence, then the answer is always move on. Unless it has horns or wings. In which case you should check your texts from last night.
I rode this horse from age 3 to 5 and then bought him. He was a successful low level hunter/jumper in his four year old year and the owner had attempted to event him at five, but the horse wasn’t confident and broke to a trot on course and refused to pick back up, so he was put up for sale as the owner preferred the wild type, not the slow down to a trot so he can eyeball things type. The horse had some oddities as far as being sensitive to shoeing/prone to bruising, etc., but was not noticeably lame at the time, just slow to warm up. Again, big, young horse. I made excuses. I showed him in hunters for a few years before switching to eventing. Always the same: slow to warm up. He’d have days where he felt “off” but never lame. We never made it out of the lower levels, because while he turned out to be very trustworthy horse XC, I could not sort out his underlying issues well enough to feel safe at anything solid above novice level.
Prior to me buying him he had two vettings. I believe he passed the first exam except for a cataract in one eye and the cataract made them too nervous to buy him. (They later came back and made an offer for him, but I’d already purchased him.) At the second vetting he was lame after a two week trial. He was taken to a teaching hospital where even a CT could not identify the cause of the left front lameness. Finally the surgeon blocked his coffin joint on a hunch and he went sound. The plan was that we would inject his coffin joint when he came home, but he had an unexpected two week stall rest due to the hospital going on quarantine. He came home sound at that stage. I never injected his coffin joint, but he had intermittent sole bruising for years after that and I suspect the issue at his second vetting was simply deep bruising. The sole bruising is actually much better these days after 10 years of proper shoeing. That said, I now think the bruising was in part due to the fact that the stiffness/slowness to warm up behind added additional demands to his front end. I can warm him up in the ring and make him use himself appropriately, but he goes through the other 23 hours of his day under his own power, doing as he pleases, and he does himself no good with being stiff out in the field. The repeated bruising also cost me endlessly in riding opportunities. I cancelled clinics, lessons, and shows because he could be sound Friday and dead lame Saturday. There were places I would show up to with a sound horse only to discover the ground was torn up and hard, which meant he didn’t move soundly across it and I would have to excuse myself. There is nothing quite like getting up at 4am to braid, bandage and ship to a show, only to walk up to the judge’s box at C, thank them for being there and let them know that you will be excusing yourself as your horse couldn’t handle the warm up footing, so he couldn’t warm up enough to get moving soundly through his body.
Slowness to warm up is now what I would consider a major red flag. In my horse’s case, it also goes along with being slow to recover from even the most minor injury. The repeated bruising earlier in his life typically meant weeks off, and then months to get him fit again as it’s awfully hard to get a good work out in when it takes 20 minutes just to get your horse moving in a way that builds proper muscling and stamina. Do not underestimate what it will mean to need 20 minutes to warm up before you get to work. For most people the warm up is just a thing they do. When a horse needs to warm up to go appropriately, there are no short cuts, you can’t truly get to work during that time. It’s a time suck, and it will mean you have far less time to spend on real work, because half to a third of your riding time will be spent on that very focused warm up. Someone told me just the other day that they had such a great ride on their horse, they were done in 20 minutes, because they’d accomplished everything they wanted in that time. It blows my mind that people can have a productive training ride in 20 minutes. I don’t even know what my ride will be like until I finish that 20 minute warm up. If all I have is 20 minutes to ride in, I don’t bother to have a plan for the day. It’s just getting my horse moving, swinging, and just as he’s loosened up and ready to do actual work, I’m done.
There was no one event, no sudden lameness that I couldn’t fix. We’d have great stretches of riding, followed by long stretches of frustration where he was not right but not lame and I’d have to back way down and do an entire rehab from the ground up. At this point I consider myself an excellent rehabber and a mediocre rider who has lost much of what I had gained from decades of riding sounder horses. Progress under such circumstances becomes impossible. After years of hard work with little to show for it, I am realizing the depth to this issue and I have full burnout. At this point, he is also showing signs similar to shivers. I haven’t gotten a second opinion but the equine vets I consult with agree that his behavior is suspicious. So, has it been shivers all along? Is the shivers a result of whatever the underlying issue is? Are they two separate issues: neurologic and musculoskeletal (presumably) and they are now interacting in new and exciting ways? I’m at the end of my rope and he’s sound enough to eat grass. That’s all I can manage to care about in the face of the other ongoing global issues. I’ll say it again: Do. Not. Buy. This. Horse. Don’t buy a potentially ticking time bomb of a horse. Horses are expensive and nerve racking on a good day. Don’t buy one that’s already a problem if you plan to do anything other than worry and fret with this horse.
Essentially, if a horse is lame at a vetting, assume they will stay lame. That is the point of a vetting. You can’t predict the future, you just want to know how the horse is doing at that moment and if you can live with that horse’s current state of being. You should not assume the horse will be any better than the way they are presented to you. Lameness can hide a thousand greater sins under it, so even if you get them sound in the hooves, there is literally no guarantee that this horse, with its chronic history of being “slow to warm up,” is actually sound in body. Buy the horse you want, not the horse you will have to hope fixes up into what you want.
There are a lot of horses out there.
Why would you waste so much more of your time on this question mark, with all of those other horses out there that you could have been choosing from these past weeks? Continuing to fool around with this is not a path to you riding your new horse.
^^^ This. Tattoo this on some readily visible body part before horse shopping again.
And the vet that was willing to give a conditional go-ahead, the “if the horse is sound later if it gets shoes if if if …”? Don’t call that vet ever again. Especially not for a PPE. Is this PPE vet going to pick up the bill if the horse comes up with all kinds of come-and-go lamenesses for the next few years?
Buying a horse with an identified and manageable issue is one thing.
Buying an undiagnosed problem is entirely another.
Walk away.
the only way I would take this horse is if the owner priced him way low to off load him and I wanted a project that might only result in a nice horse with companionable nature for trail riding.
The forging and pulling off shoes can be attributed to a horse not trained to use itself properly. It sounds to me like all involved in this horse are weak or indifferent horse-persons. I am not so sure he has been given a fair shake. Many horses can take 20 minutes to warm up if their riders are weak , indifferent or not very skilled. Cruddy quality of feet may be helped by proper management and attention from a good farrier plus a foot care program, like Keratex
It sounds like your husband got on him and showed him that he could go to work, properly. It may well be that he has been de-tuned to the aids or he has trained his rider to tune down the aids.
Dont take him on as a charity case ( lease) it is go or no go. Remember the owner interfered with the shoes issue, you dont want to buy in to that. Buy him only if you want the satisfaction of making a project, no matter what the result. Price has to be just above meat.
this horse needs an upgrade of living standard because by your words, no one has really seemed to do right by him.
as far as never being rung out at a dressage show , that would have to be some serious lameness for a bell, Dressage judges are pretty darn generous in my experience.
To be fair it’s not that we haven’t been keeping an eye open for other prospects, too. I’ve been scouring ads and we’ve tried at least one other horse but our area (IV) doesn’t seem to have a lot of eventers for sale. People must be doing their horse trading through underground channels I’m not aware of. Then when COVID hit that kind of screwed up being able to even go to other barns/people seemed to hold off on listing much of anything. We were planning to tag on horse shopping with LRK3DE but that was canceled plus we had a personal matter come up at home that prevented us from leaving town.
Really the issues with this horse only came up in the last 1.5 weeks (and we’ve been out of town the last 0.5 of that). Prior, we’d ridden him 3 times, including schooling XC and with our trainer without any major red flags. It wasn’t until yesterday that the leasee was more specific about the warm-up time. In the past she just generally said he “can be a little slow” warming up.
She was pretty certain the issue was in his foot, especially since he was fine on it after blocking. She could tell he had no sole plus he showed soreness and otherwise flexed fine. And based on previous videos she seemed pretty certain that particular lameness was a shoeing issue. So it wasn’t a simple, oh he has flat feet, just put shoes on him and he should be fine. She DID become concerned when he showed lameness in the hind after blocking the front. That was when she said something more is likely going on, they should do more diagnostics, and she started steering us toward moving on. Her specialty is in sport horses and lameness issues so I trust her on that front.
Others have been kind. I think you are being asked to let trouble come sit at your dining room table. You should r un from this one.
If insurance is a worry, OP, just know that you are going to have serious exclusions on your MM. Sounds like 3 out of 4 legs have issues. You may be able to get coverage but I think the exclusions will make it worthless.
If the issue is that you might have to travel to see a horse., then you are letting convenience cloud your judgment, There is a great deal that you can do to preview horses that are not next door. If you do your homework, it will not be a waste of time. I would never let the owner’s comment about sending the horse to a sales barn trouble me. Good for her! Maybe someone will buy him, but maybe he will stay there for a while. It’s not your problem.
You are dodging a bullet if you walk form this horse. Seriously. And I sell horses on a regular basis.
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