Do you wonder if he knew something about the sellers you didn’t, and was too professional to disclose it? That’s what my mind jumped too.
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I once had a Vet doing a PPE on a horse I was in the process of buying tell me that physically she was fine but he was concerned about her temperament - I should have listened to him.
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Can you explain more on this? What did the vet see that concerned him, and how did it manifest with you?
Yes, do tell…
I want to know more about this, too!
My trainer was selling a horse from one client to a junior that was ship in client.
The vet “passed” the horse on the PPE but told them that the horse wasn’t worth as as much as the asking price. Junior’s parents turned down the horse based what the vet said. Yes the trainer was there when the vet talked about the horse being overpriced so it wasn’t a negotiating tactic by the parents.
Horse was sold shortly after that for more money. Six months later the junior still had not found a horse.
The junior rode the horse in a probably 5 or 6 lessons before they decided to vet the horse. The junior loved the horse so I felt bad for her.
I am not sure why the vet ever asked about price or felt it was his place to comment about price. I can understand asking based on conformation would the horse be suitable for the intended job but not price. No the vet was not a long time friend of the family and didn’t know the horse, trainer or sellers prior to the PPE.
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Yeah that’s rude AF and not a vet’s place at all.
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Who knows, maybe! Although the vet/clinic said they had no relationship with the owner/horse. So 🤷! It was pretty weird.
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Weird but I bet he saw something BAD. I have had a vet completely fail a horse a client was looking at. She bought it anyway. Never was sound.
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Maybe! Would think he would have told me that, though. 
I had a very, very big name vet do a PPE on a mare I had for sale. He was able to diagnose that she had chipped off part of her RH leg AND had kissing spine. He did all this evaluation without ever taking one image! He had x-ray vision. I guess if you can work at the Olympic level, you gain these tremendous skills. Needless to say, the buyer worshipped the ground he walked on as many other clients do. She passed.
The mare went to a competent vet at Morven Park who actually used imaging equipment. Glory be, she found an OCD lesion in the right hock. No broken leg bone, no kissing spine. The buyer asked if I would reduce the price to cover surgery. I was fine with that the diagnosis was based on science not some idiot who could tell all sorts of things without bothering to get an image to support his theory.
I will never use him again, don’t care how famous he is. The man is a fraud. Kissing spine was his diagnosis de jour a few years ago.
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I bet I know exactly who this is!!! He diagnosed one of my horses with his x-ray vision too. :lol:
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Kissing spines are obvious - especially if the horse is out of work. You would be able to see it yourself. Stupid assessment by that idiot vet.
Off topic - but I just loved a vet who came out to look at a horse of mine who was NQR. My old farrier was there. At the end of what amounted to a PPE, the vet turned to me and said “she isnt right. I cant tell you why but she is definitley not right”. Then proceded to give me a referral to the lameness expert at the clinic - a small animal vet usually but who was used to horses. From watching her trot on a circle and from her history, that vet diagnosed her issues, said that we should xray and was confirmed. Mare was retired that day with damaged back ligaments. She did develop kissing spines
We had a nice little mare at the track who was done racing and the owner said he had a friend who was interested in buying her. The buyer called and said she didn’t want our vet doing the PPE-fine with us. Then she called and said she wanted Dr. X to do the PPE-our vet. Fine with us. Dr. X did a full PPE- x-rays all around, scope, etc. At the end of it, she asked him (by phone) if the horse could jump 5’. He said he couldn’t answer that question. She insisted he answer that question and he insisted he could not. They went around in circles for a few hours; it was a race day and every time the vet drove past our barn he would holler out his window, “that lady is crazy”.
She bought the horse. Owner arranged shipping. She insisted we outfit the horse in 4 shipping wraps and a bonnet. We did. We never got paid for the wraps or bonnet, the vet never got paid for the PPE, and i’d be surprised if the owner ever got paid for shipping or the horse. All in all, that lady got a pretty good deal.
Some poetic justice: we bought the shipping wraps out of the clearance bin at the tack store and they were all different colors.
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Been a long time, had a parent pass on a child’s pony because it was too good and she refused to believe it wasn’t drugged (it wasn’t). I stepped away to let them play with the pony while tied in the barn, and I was told later she hauled the stall mucker out to ask if she could find an injection site :lol:.
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Back to the concern about temperament - the PPE was done in an unfamiliar indoor on a windy evening, lots of wind related noise. The mare was flighty and spooky. I blamed the weather - later my much trusted Vet said he made allowances for the circumstances and still thought the spook and flighty were much more deeply seated. He was a consumate horseman with great instincts and I should have listened.
The mare was fine so long as you asked little of her but got obnoxious when asked to work, I wound up selling her to someone who just wanted to walk around her ring and pasture. It was a much better fit for the horse than being the mount for a kid working on her Pony Club B rating.
To MsB’s point, I had a vet advise me to pass on temperament alone. She nearly ran us over (three people) at one point in the exam. It was the first time I saw the horse so reactive.
I passed on the horse and to this day years later, she’s still not truly broke to ride. I saw a video of her being restarted and I was glad I passed! She had a feisty side for sure.
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Not so much the vet check itself, but everything surrounding it.
Back in 07 or thereabouts I was selling my project, except I wasn’t really selling him as I’d moved to the UK by then, and my mother and trainer were selling him. He was a sweet, easygoing Clyde-QH-TB cross who’d been a delight to bring on. Anyway, I’d given my trainer permission to use him in lessons as she saw fit, and one of her students had fallen in love with him and wanted to buy him. Yay. We thought. Then the barn had a strangles outbreak. My horse got it, along with every other horse. My trainer let the student nurse my horse when he was ill, and then in the middle of it all, she was desperate to get him vetted. Trainer and Mom didn’t recommend it as he was recovering from strangles but the woman insisted on it, we conceded, and he was vetted. But then she suddenly decided that she didn’t want to buy the horse until the outbreak passed, even though she went through the trouble of the vet check. Fine, whatever. It wasn’t like other people were lining up to view the horse while strangles was running around the barn.
To make a long story short, she went crazy and started leaving the trainer angry voicemails, accusing her of highway robbery because she thought the horse was priced too high. God knows why she didn’t say anything in a sane, normal way before the vetting. I guess she had a chance to think about it, or thought we would negotiate after vet check or give her a discount out of the goodness of our hearts? Who knows? She then had a falling out with my mother, which led to my mother and the trainer deciding that they did not want to sell the horse to her. She went ballistic and made a lot of noise, trying to make them pay for the vet check (that she INSISTED on against everyone’s better judgement due to the strangles outbreak), holding some paperwork “hostage” until they did, and complaining that they were “denying her the right” to buy the horse.
Eventually, the horse was sold to someone else about a year later, for even more money as he’d had an extra year of professional training and did a few shows. And that was also a story. My mother will never sell a horse for me again.
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Completely serious. The vet used for the PPE was known to dislike mares and although it was never said, I suspect that was the source of the sudden, “oh, I don’t want a mare” decision.
It’s fine. A young trainer bought the mare, rode her for a bit, used her for students and she became a real favorite in her program because of her sweet nature and consistency.
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Yeah, my own vet loves my mare. I didn’t think the buyer’s vet had a crystal ball handy, but I guess she believed him. She was bummed. She really liked the horse and her trainer also liked her. I adore her so it all worked out!
