walk away.
there’s no shortage of horses.
one thing if its your own horse that contracts such a thing, quite another to BUY a horse with such recent history.
keep shopping.
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In light of this, going to give you the polar opposite of the answer above, and vote march right down and sit on him. As I read your post, the only thing causing you concern is soundness (including Lyme mgmt), and this is otherwise the horse you’re looking for. Leasing him for a year - assuming a free lease where you just pay all of his expense - with an out if he becomes unsound sounds perfect. I’ve done this both as a buyer and seller and had perfect matches and happy people and horses on all sides every time.
Good luck!
My hesitance to consider this horse is more based on his not being in consistent work than the history of lyme it self. If he was in full work and competing and sound then I wouldn’t be too concerned. But I’m hesitant to buy anything out of a field that was put out there to heal. Who says they did? If you could do a 6 month lease to buy situation that would be a more reasonable risk. I just wouldn’t want to take on the responsibility of a horses long term care to find out that he’s funny behind if jumped over 2’9" consistently.
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In New England, at the height of summer, the odds are that any horse you look at will test positive for Lyme right now. Everything will probably have been treated within the past two years. It’s just that prevalent here. I have owned one horse that, for whatever reason, seemed incredibly resistant to it. All the rest have had it. There is just no way to suppress the ticks.
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I’m going to add one more thought to the mix: in my experience the majority of the worst Lyme cases (those in which symptoms seemed to go on and on and/ or were sickest) were horses that were imported. They seemed to have no immunity to Lyme at all, and even when treated successfully took longer to bounce back. NB: This is just my anecdotal experience.
