What do you all think of Lauren Sprieser's most recent blog post?

[Argo]

Was that blog entry ‘helpful and kind’?

I’ve scoured this part of the earth for young horses, and never blamed the market because I’m a part of that market. The horse world is too small. Just look at the earlier comment here saying something like ‘I guess she doesn’t want to train our young horses for us’. Yikes! indeed.

Having been a fan for years of reading her entries, I was just telling a friend the other day that the shine is starting to wear off.

• trouble hiring staff (sorry, I think someone who’s shown PSG in Poughkeepsie makes an interesting applicant to wipe out your water buckets)
• Ella being ‘Team potential’ for sale at 500,000E (not breaking 70% and sporting an incurable infection)
• any trainer who isn’t a tall blond named Lauren is bad, that’s how you know they’re bad
• the complaints about showing in the wind, in the rain, in the heat, in the cold, stricken with the plague, to blind judges, for too much money

This is the only way I ‘know’ her, and it’s part of what she chooses to put out there, on the internet.

[stoicfish]

Meatandpotatoes or whatever. How to single me out of the 39 threads that basically all agree. Lol. This reeks of personal crap that seems to Vaguely be your style. Too funny.

Thanks for the advice but I have even less respect for your opinion then you showed for mine.

[Cumano]

[QUOTE=meupatdoes;8526410]
That’s nice that you know all of these people that she apparently doesn’t.

Since you clearly have the time and energy to dedicate all these paragraphs to espousing your superior knowledge, do you have any left over to perhaps write an introductory email.

Here, let me help:
[Beeeder], meet Lauren, Lauren, meet [breeder]
“Lauren is an accomplished GP trainer with a reputation for being kind to both clients and horses. She was recently looking for some top equine talent and since I know you breed great horses, and she can take horsed all the way up the levels, I thought I’d introduce you. You guys can take it from here.”

See?
This way you can spend time on the Internet being helpful and kind.[/QUOTE]

I think stoicfish’s answer was totaly adequate, and not half as contemptuous as was her blog. There are good, conscientious and experienced breeders in NA. The market has its problems, but they are there, and work hard to make it work. Anyone who has been, even just a bit, involved in the market for higher end horses, either as a breeder, a dealer, a coach or a client, will admit that someone looking for a GP prospect through an ISO post on Facebook either doesn’t know what she is doing or simply wanted to create this reaction. As I don’t presume that she is the first person, I can only assume that she knew exactly what she was doing and wanted to provoke that type of reaction. I any case, no one having the horse she was looking for would seriously consider the post she made a serious opportunity worth wasting time on, and she should have known that.

The breeders she describes in her blog sure exists, and they are in big numbers, but it seems that she simply went fishing for them!

[Cumano]

If she had looked in Europe for her top prospect the way she did in America, with an ISO post, we would have had a blog with the classical “europeans are only dumping their garbage horses on naïve Amercian buyers” argument.

[HSS]

Hmm.

I just read the blog post. I didn’t find it as annoying as many people here have stated- it’s the only one I’ve ever read from this person, and indeed, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of this person, so perhaps familiarity breeds contempt.

As far as finding your new international horse on Facebook, well that’s a giggle isn’t it? I don’t know about anyone else, but I find the entire FB thing to be a colossally screwed up time wasting bore. The very thought of wasting my life paging through post after post is enough to send me to the nearest whiskey bottle. I have no clue whatsoever why anyone bothers with this stuff, much less thinks that they can find their absolute next Vallegro on it.

So, that seems absurd to me, and perhaps she just couldn’t think of anything new to say?

What I was a little surprised by is her assertion that people are so rude to her. I don’t find that to be the main interaction description of breeders I interact with, although I could say that many of the people standing stallions seem to be flaky beyond belief, and it’s best to stick with the big guys, who have a frickin clue. Although not always.

I was searching for a high quality young horse last year, and my main complaint was that horse people are damned difficult to get ahold of, and are often pretty wishy washy. But rude? Not my experience.

I did find that horse, but the IRS had other ideas of what I was to do with my money, so I was not able to consummate the deal. It was an American bred Hanoverian. It appeared to me to be at least as nice as the one which this blogger purchased. It was bred by a lovely but very small breeder for herself, but life interfered with her plans, so he was offered for sale. The price was very fair, and considerably cheaper than what the blogger apparently paid. Took me less than 60 days to locate the horse.

I have another, home bred, which I am starting this spring that looks at least as nice as the one the blogger purchased, actually, appears to have better movement. These horses are here in America.

To find them you need to network a bit- if you like a stallion, that would be my first call- to find the offspring. Stallion owners are often in contact with their breeders, and have a clue about the offspring of same.

To find a young horse you need to know something about bloodlines, conformation, and age appropriate movement of horses not already under saddle. There’s lots of bad videos too- because it’s not easy for the average backyard breeder with 2 mares to make a stunning video of a butt high 2 year old in 3 feet of snow- but that’s your prospective horse.

[Bent_Hickory]

This is what top dressage breeders are doing with their best young horses – getting them in front of international riders with connections to other international riders:

“Two horses that I bred, one sired by Shakespeare RSF, the other sired by Sir James, are invited to the young horse lessons with Christine Traurig this week!”

• Mo Swanson, Rolling Stone Farm, February 15, 2016.