All PPE is paid by the buyer using their vet of choice and does not need to be shared with seller except as it’s strategically necessary to back out of a deal or bargain.
Same same as a home buyer getting an inspection or a car buyer taking a second hand car to a mechanic for a checkup.
if anything is so questionable as to MRI, it’s probably time to walk away. I would not expect a seller to do an MRI for you, and if I were a seller, and it got to that point, I am not sure I would allow one to be done on my horse. IF my horse needs an MRI, I wouldn’t be having people come do a PPE. He’d be injured.
Same. I wonder if @phippsie62 means an ultrasound? Not unusual to ultrasound soft tissue on a big purchase.
I am n=1 of course, but I agree with the others that there is little to no negotiation for a horse that is doing the job, especially if the seller knows about the finding in advance.
I don’t blame a buyer for trying (I actually just did on a pricey deal), of course, but there are PLENTY of six-figure horses with bone chips, cysts, etc., selling every day. If the horse is qualified for the job and you pass, someone will come along and buy it.
MRIs are really expensive. I don’t think many of us have the budget to do MRIs as part of a pre-purchase exam.
For the horse I mentioned above, the radiologist recommended an MRI and referred me to a local vet hospital. I got some info from the clinic but decided not to do the MRI. 3 other vets (PPE vet and 2 vets here) thought an MRI would provide a better view of the issue, but we could see a lot on the multiple X-rays we took. And at the end of the day, the horse had still been jumping a lot without an issue. It wasn’t going to be anything requiring surgery in any case. MRI would have given us more details, but there wasn’t a high chance it would be deal breaker information. I opted not to do it. The sellers offered a price reduction equivalent to the cost for the MRI. Of course, just the anesthesia and all for an MRI is a risk to the horse.
Horse has had a few health issues and also a really bad injury doing something utterly suicidal since I bought him (because, horses!), but has been pretty low maintenance on that ankle!
PPE’s are a fact finding mission, not an exam to leverage a better deal.
The conclusion of it should be you deciding if you’re willing and able to deal with current or future maintenance of things found on PPE.
Ie; has some bridging and narrowing of the tarsals in the lower hock….conclusion: horse will begin fusing lower hocks soon, am I prepared and willing financially to inject, give time off, support with equioxx etc until they completely fuse and are a non issue? And does this align with my goals for this horse.
When I bought my now-retired GP dressage horse as a 4-year-old, X-rays showed a bone chip in his hock and we negotiated a price reduction equal to the cost of surgery to remove it, if that were to become necessary. Naturally, the horse is now 27 and never took a lame step on that leg. Over the years he did suffer from a litany of maladies not predicted by the PPE (EPM, front suspensory, annular ligament, straight wire fence entanglement, a bone cyst in the shoulder that required three surgeries before he was sound again, etc).
I might try to negotiate again over something simple like a bone chip with a good prognosis if needing removal. (Though if the horse has already been sound on it for a few years, the seller might not go for it.) I think it’s hard to make blanket statements because every situation is so different.
To responders who commented on my MRI post, here’s a recent case in point.
A friend of mine vetted a lovely 6-yeaqr-old Holsteiner mare as an eventing prospect. She had X-rays done on both fronts as part of a PPE. The findings came back “unremarkable,” but there was a little something funny, just a tiny bit NQR on flexions. The vet advised her that he couldn’t tell if there was anything problematic without an MRI, but the horse was going well so she didn’t do it. She went ahead with the purchase, and three months down the road the mare was in obvious pain, so she did the MRI which discovered arthritic changes in both front feet. The mare will never event and is only suitable for lower-level dressage perhaps. At this point my friend is willing to give her away to the right situation, which won’t be easy to find since the mare is not only green, being 6 years old, but very hot.
So yes–MRIs are very expensive…but so is the loss of a five-figure purchase price.
Do owners regularly let you MRI a prospect? I certainly wouldn’t. It’s not risk free, and quite the hassle.
That said, I don’t deal in crazy expensive horses either, so maybe this is more common than I’m aware?
Sure, but I don’t have an unlimited budget and every precautionary MRI I do as part of a PPE shrinks my horse purchase budget by several thousand dollars. A pre-purchase MRI here, a pre-purchase MRI there, and pretty soon I haven’t got any money left to buy a horse.
If you can afford to routinely do MRIs as part of your PPEs, then that’s great for you. Carry on. My point was simply that most of us can’t afford to do that.
I agree with those that said they may negotiate for the cost of a procedure to fix an issue down the road - for example surgery to fix a chip or OCD. Maybe if the horse has signs of early arthritis you could negotiate some for the cost of future maintenance. But definitely depends on the age/experience of the horse and the willingness of the seller to negotiate. If its a young horse that does not yet have much of a competitive career then you’d likely have a better chance at getting the price down for the “unknown.”
I do t negotiate or make an offer until after the ppe. Even if the ppe is fine, I always offer. Just like buying a house imo. They can say no or counter. That’s just business to me.
I think it’s more common than it used to be (at the upper end/6 figure horses) to do advanced diagnostics on PPE - MRI (although I’ve only heard of someone doing front feet in the standing machine), bone scan, and scope.
IMHO, that’s abnormal and not something many people I know would go for. If you are going to make an offer, do it before you vet it. Most sellers will assume that you purchasing for asking price if you don’t agree to a different price before the vetting. You can always make another offer later if there are results on the vetting.
Call me crazy, but don’t the inspections and things happen AFTER an offer is “accepted”? I hit the housing market for the first time after 2020, so that might be a new thing. AFAIK people don’t go around inspecting houses without offers placed and accepted?
Offer - counters - acceptance - inspections - renegotiation if something insane is found, or the buyer walks away. Same thing with horses, though the amount of renegotiation the seller will tolerate is often lower IME.
I personally, as a seller, would be unwilling to allow someone to do an MRI on my horse because I would not want to deal with the anesthetic risk/risk in recovery for a “maybe” buyer. General anesthesia ain’t a walk in the park with horses and having lost one of mine in recovery, that’s not a risk I’d be willing to take with my animal for a buyer.
Every purchase I’ve ever made is contingent on the PPE. When there are findings, I may try to negotiate. It is “just business”.
Same here, but you(g) come to an agreement first then PPE. Any negotiation afterwards is minimal - like others have said, often for the price of the “fix” unless it’s an older one who has been sound for ages. YMMV and sometimes you get lucky with a seller that just needs the horse moved!
Even a standing MRI requires a haul to the clinic and no small amount of drugs and hassle - again I’m not dealing with $400k horses, but I wouldn’t put my horse through that unless I was actually worried about a finding. In which case maybe making a buyer pay for it is smart 
Just as a point of clarification: A standing MRI does not require anesthesia–meaning horse rendered unconscious, as it might be for, say, colic surgery.
A standing MRI is just that–horse is standing. Sedation is used.
In my limited experience buying horses, I’ve negotiated a price that was contingent on the PPE with an explicitly stated expectation that the results of the PPE might result in either further negotiations or my not buying the horse. But I wouldn’t expect to take much off the agreed upon price after the PPE–I’d either be willing to go forward with purchase or else walk away.
There were also agreements about a deposit to “hold” the horse (i.e. to keep the seller from showing the horse to other buyers) prior to the PPE, and then agreement about whether the deposit is refundable if the sale doesn’t go through because of some finding on the PPE.
My horse had a heart murmur show up on his PPE and we knew this when we tried him. He was almost sold to a client of a BNT for twice as much as we bought him for until they found the heart murmur. We tried him and absolutely loved him so we had the findings evaluated by a cardiologist at New Bolton. We ultimately went through with the deal. Granted, this was an upper-five figure horse discounted from a 6 figure horse but nonetheless the heart murmur didn’t scare us away. He is now 22 and has been an absolutely wonderful horse who campaigned at a high level for years (though he’s tried to die from other unrelated ailments).
Editing to add: ironically enough the horse is now happily retired and lives with a cardio-thoracic surgeon. I figure he is in good hands 
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