WWYD if your horse injured a trainer?

What is his breedibg?
Where are you located?
How much?

I had a variation of your horse. If someone had offered me what I paid for her, I would have been thrilled. As it was, I was quite happy with the $500 I got.

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Hanoverian, southeast, $4500. I don’t want to publicly post video but I would be down to DM someone to get their sense of his value and maybe diagnose what’s going on.

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Send me a pm im interested

To be honest, when you posted the description of the horse on the previous thread it never crossed my mind that you purchased it for low four figures. Someone did you super, super wrong. The red flags on that were HUGE. There is likely something drastically wrong with this horse.

BlockquoteMy trainer steered me to an imported wb gelding, had been in the US just over 2 years, quietly being networked out of a rated show barn. He wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I fell in love with him, he passed the PPE, and the price was (suspiciously) right at a time when even barely restarted OTTBs were going for low 5’s, so I jumped for it. Of course, within days of getting him home it was clear I had bitten off more than I could chew. I handed the reins to my trainer for 30 days, but we only made it through 5 of those before he turned really nasty and explosive. She advised sending him to a western colt starter for a full restart from the ground. Simultaneously, I was hearing through the grapevine that the horse had a reputation, was probably never going to be appropriate for me, and the trainer’s motivations were not altogether above board.

Blockquote

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:rage:

An imported horse that’s been in a professional program for two years for $4500.

:rage:

Shame on that trainer for selling him to you.

:rage:

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^^^^This x1000!

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Reminds me of a story with an old friend … she bought a rogue (hate to say the word, but he was out of control) WB as a dressage horse. He hated it, acted out, was wild and predictably unpredictable and not safe. Retrained as a jumper, which he seemed to love for a few months.

She was approached by a trainer who said she’d sell him … she already had a buyer for 5x what my friend sold him to the trainer for (friend didn’t know that). Friend watched the horse get flipped every few months until he landed with someone with a purchase price of around $85k … and this was like 15 years ago. New buyer gets his ass handed to him by this horse almost immediately, and because my friend was the last person identified on his papers, got the call about how could you sell this dangerous animal?

Anyhow, no clue what happened to the horse at the end of all that (or the last buyer) and my friend was rightly not responsible for any of that mess. But another example unfortunately of people finding brief windows of rideability and selling horses without full disclosure. (oh, my friend made it abundantly clear when she sold him that he was re-purposed as a jumper because he was a psycho about dressage.)

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Send me a pm!
And omg you got rolled!

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I’d be interested to see a video. Can’t seem to DM you. I am not in a position to take this horse off your hands but have had my own problem horse and saw a lot when I was rehabbing and training for others. Also tend to get some weird medical cases.

And just to clarify for you what some others are saying…the original importer likely had another 0 into this horse fresh off the plane. And while a horse with bad vetting and a lot of maintenance or semi-retired in search of a good home might drop drastically in price, the fire sale price in this situation is a huge red flag (and hard for you to know that, but your trainer 100% should have).

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My old trainer was a World Cup level rider and went on to be an assistant to one of our best olympians. He came to our very backyard farm to teach me :slight_smile:

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If you can get the price you listed for this horse today, with full disclosure, sell him IMMEDIATELY. A horse like this is a giveaway, at best, normally.

If that offer evaporates, personally, I would seriously consider euthanasia in your situation. Yes, the horse may have a physical issue that may or may not be fixable. But, at this point, is it worth your safety and significant money, not to mention stress/discomfort on the horse, to keep going down that route? I’m not so sure. Horses don’t understand time, but they absolutely do understand pain and fear. I’m not sure that allowing a horse to suffer while we search for an explanation or solution is necessarily in the best interest of the horse. It’s not a popular stance to take, but…regardless of the reason, this horse is dangerous and clearly uncomfortable or unhappy.

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Throughout the entire thread I’ve wondered if the trainer knew the reason for the fire sale, thought it could be fixed, and quickly realized he or she wasn’t the person to solve that puzzle.

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And there are plenty European charlatan horse dealers who can make a nice video, be in cahoots with their vet, and sell a lemon to unsuspecting Americans. Even the supposedly reputable dealers do it, ask me how I know.

If the horse was imported 2-ish years ago, it was likely by video during the height of covid.

A trainer who puts 5 days on a horse then sends to a cowboy is one who is smart enough to know they have an issue that is more than they can deal with and sends it to someone who specializes in young or behavior-challenged horses.

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Yes, that’s what I’d be inclined to wonder–if the European dealer thought the horse has an issue, and unloaded it to an unsuspecting American market, versus something “nice enough” to be imported. I remember in another thread a long time ago, someone saying how sometimes a very strong, tall European guy riding with a driving seat can get at least a respectable sales video of a horse jumping.

I know the OP said that she discovered the horse had a reputation after the sale. Two years is pretty quick to get a reputation! Did the trainer give an explanation about why the horse was so cheap at the time?

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Imported or not, warmblood or not, that horse is realistically a giveaway, so I would take any amount you can get (provided you give FULL DISCLOSURE of his behavior).

Honestly, though, IMO, the kindest, most ethical thing to do is eat your costs and put him down. He’s in danger of ending up in a really bad situation once he leaves your care.

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This happened to a friend of mine. When I met her, she and this mare were from a strictly H/J background but the mare was having some issues so my friend began doing dressage and found that the mare was much happier. They were quite successful, moving up to third level in a short number of years and having top places at recognized competitions. Somewhere along the line, the mare started rearing. My friend is a good rider and wasn’t too scared by the rearing but certainly didn’t like or tolerate it. The rearing got worse and turned into rearing and falling over backwards. My friend was typically able to hop off in time but I think I remember her saying that the mare broke a saddle once. I still cannot believe that she managed to escape unscathed. Vetting, therapies, etc. were consistently inconclusive over all this time. And then it happened at a clinic with a BNR, who said that the horse should never be ridden again or euthanized.

My friend ended up euthanizing her because she felt that the mare was a danger to anyone else and she was worried about someone trying to ride the mare and being hurt or killed. She was worried from both an ethical and legal standpoint. She felt that even if she made a full disclosure and put that into the sale/transfer paperwork, she could still be held liable. That worry was too much for her and she did not feel like paying for the horse to be a pasture puff, so there was only one option left.

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Maybe I am missing something but I would question a buyer that wants to pursue this horse as a riding horse. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay for the horse and then dump a lot of money into vetting to find out if the horse can even be ridden. Less sensible would be someone who thinks they can whip the horse into shape without vetting. I’d be worried the new buyer would get injured and still try to hold me liable.

The fact that this is an imported horse that sold for $4500 tells me something is wrong with this horse on a level that can’t be fixed. Most importers will dump the money into vetting and treatment because it sure beats what they paid for import and quarantine, let alone cost of the horse + import.

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