I’m in NC and after spending $$$$ on training my horse, as luck would have it, I will likely never fully recover from Late stage Lyme Disease/partial knee replacement needed/frozen shoulder/heart arithmia and it appears that unless I dump $$$$ into training I won’t be able to sell my horse anywhere but Craigslist.
As much as I look forward to the rare days I can ride him and then be bedridden for days afterward, someone mentioned leasing him out.
He does not have the miles under the saddle he should but he is a quick learner (aren’t they all lol). If I lease, should I discuss a sale price first? Can I add a contiguousy that he cannot be sold in less than a year? As well as first refusals of sale?
As for the lease, he is insured and it runs out in April. Can I ask them to contribute toward his health insurance while leasing him? It is a free lease and he is barefoot. Can I request that they cover his shoes since I would not be putting them on him if he was not in work?
Another fly in the ointment is that I’m going to be traveling to a Lyme clinical trial while the lease is taking place. Can I request photo updates etc?
I know it sounds like I’m a pain in the ass but I was to make sure my horse is safe and okay while going thru some serious medical treatment and the less stress the better.
Please, dear God, don’t rip me apart for this post. I just want to ask/request legitimate requests while I’m dealing with my own health issues.
Thank you in advance
Heaps of healing hhhhmmmssss .
If you lease him you can ask for whatever you want. The should insure him, shoe him, feed him, send you photos, etc. You can even put in there that you can ride him on your good days. They are not obligated to buy him and can give him back to you at any time.
If you sell him you can request stuff but you have no authority about anything. He is now theirs and if they sell him the next day for a $5,000.00 profit. There is nothing you can do about it.
Just advertise him as for sale or lease. Sale price is $x, monthly lease price is $y, must commit to however many months you want. Get a good contract hat specifies who can break the lease and why. It’s reasonable to ask the leaser to cover shoes and insurance. Putting conditions like that on a sale is not reasonable and is likely to make him impossible to sell. (And really, they’re not advantageous to you either-- once you’ve sold him it doesn’t matter to you whether they’re making a profit.) You can ask them to let you know if they put him up for sale, but know that it generally isn’t legally enforceable.
for my leases, the family was responsible for board/shoes/vet/chiro, and insurance on the competition horses but not the semi-retired pony. Regular updates, to included photos or video, so I could evaluate condition/weight, were required. In most cases, my leases have worked out well, though in one case the leasors ‘broke’ a very nice upper level show horse due to incompetent farrier.
In your case, you may want to do some sort of lease-to-buy situation. A lease of, say, 1 yr, would let you keep control of him and if you think it’s not working out, you can take him back, similarly for them, if he’s not as easy undersaddle as you think he will be. At the end of the year they can buy him for a pre-established price, send him back, or continue to free lease, whatever you agree to for terms.
In my experience, people don’t want to lease “projects”. Schoolmasters and proven show horses have a good lease market because otherwise the leasor couldnt’ afford a horse of that caliber. But for a project, a qualified person (not a CL yahoo) will think, “why should I invest all this time, money, training into a horse to make it into a nice horse, only to have it taken away at the end, with no profit to me?” And there are So Many nice projects out there that can be purchased fairly cheaply. I think if you advertise an un/green-broke horse for free lease, you’re not going to find the right situation for him.
I’m also in NC, and if you PM me your horse’s info, I might know someone for him…
Thank you for the replies and not ripping me to shreds in the process 
I guess my question about selling him and then having him “flipped” immediately afterwards is more for my horse not getting bounced around from seller to seller. I realize I have ZERO control in this aspect of the process but I guess I was just dreaming (and hoping) that this would not become the case.
The possible leasee has also asked to use his tack as well, which I’m not 100% keen on doing. I just purchased a new Bates
Isabelle dressage saddle for him about 6 months ago and it’s literally brand new and I would prefer not to include it in the contract. I’m fine with the bridle & bit but I’m a bit neurotic about my saddle and how I maintain it so I guess I’m wondering is it necessary to have that as part of the deal? I know I can add it to the contract etc but it all likelihood its condition will not be the same when it is returned than it is now.
I’m fine with his protective boots, etc, but the saddle is not something that I’m okay with including (unless they buy it outright).
I’m trying to do the “right” thing for my horse by letting someone free lease him under the supervision of a trainer to get miles under saddle on him (and I did forget to mention that I will continue to pay his board at the barn he is currently at) to get my horse doing something other than being a pasture ornament but I do not want to give all control away.
My gut is telling me this situation( with me being out of town for two months in a pretty hard core health trial) is not the best timing right now.
Perhaps I should just wait and let my boy have a few more months of glorified pasture ornament status until I’m back in town and can keep an eye on him.
A few months won’t matter to the horse.
What will matter to the horse is if he has a saddle that doesn’t fit. You might feel better selling the saddle with him to have that piece of mind.
Keeping the saddle and not the horse, it may not fit your next horse anyway and be useless to you in the future.
I recently went through something similar. No ride time per doctors orders and considered leasing the horse out, after countless tries I was just way too OCD about the way he was ridden. The only person i truly trusted was my trainer so I payed for the training on him for 6 months. although it hurt my bank account, when I got back in the saddle there was nothing to fix and he was better than ever.
I’m a big advocate of letting the professionals do what they do that’s why we pay them 
If you really can’t afford the training I would leave him be you sound like me and may be a little nitpicky about the whole lease and if you’re not sure if you want to sell then you will never sell. just my two cents no hard judgement.
I had a bad go if it when I first sent this horse out to be “backed” by a cowboy trainer that my current trainer recommended. Unfortunately she failed to inform me about a lot of things, including that “pole” that some cowboy trailers use to tie their horses up to when they misbehave (or rear up and go over - like my horse was rumored to do).
My horse had no history of rearing but long story short, he came back 250-300lbs under weight, refused to be tied (bolt & break everything he was tied too) and every time i made an appointment to watch a training session, the cowboy was a no show. Add to the drama that my current trainer was sleeping w/said cowboy (who was married) and that I became incredibly I’ll w/Lyme 1/2 thru the paid training time. Now, with a clearer head, I should have pulled my horse ASAP from the farm but I was bedridden w/104 degree fever so I screwed up my own horse, regardless if I was paying for it or too sick to check on him. Even his “incident” of rearing was only accidentally said to me in a passing conversation. I screwed him up and paid someone to do it-something I have trouble living with.
But here in NC, it’s a challenging state to sell a horse without “miles” under the saddle and when you’re too physically ill to put those miles on him and way too broke from uber expensive completely out of pocket Lyme treatments, I’m basically stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I want a safe home for my horse with a rider that’s not going to beat the crap out of him bcuz he is not perfect 100% of the time. But I don’t feel comfortable giving him away to just anyone. This situation that has just fallen into my lap sounded perfect. An experienced horse poor rider under the guidance of a known dressage instructor would free lease my horse at my boarding barn (yes, I will cover board), and put the miles & experience on him. The saddle may seem frivoluless but what happens if it “disappears”? Or is damaged? It’s a free lease with free board, and if the saddle wasn’t basically brand new I wouldn’t be picky but it’s an adjustable tree saddle and picking up a used one isn’t the end of the world IMO.
I’ve already had a bad situation when the close family friends who allowed me to store my horse trailer at their place in a covered shed ended up doing upwards of $1000 worth of damage without even an “I’m sorry” so you bet I’m a bit cautious.
I’m going to meet the rider & trainer and see how it goes but if I’m not 110% comfortable with the situation and more importantly the compatibility with my horse, he’s back to pasture ornament status until I’m back from my medical trial.
As much as I’d love to give a horse poor girl a chance to ride my horse (I used to be that girl growing up), I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.
your gut is telling you to hold onto him. Keep him for now since you would be paying board for the leasee anyway.
wait a couple of months and assess the situation again.
