Let’s leave their tenancy for gossiping aside, this is a valid question. Especially to us foreigners. Coming from EU, I was pretty surprised that a mid-teen horse would be labeled a prospect. Maybe because this market in Europe is close to non-existent… For example a friend over there was selling a 15yo super jumper German born and registered mare - a national champion in 130-140cm class and no maintainance/quirks whatsoever, AO and children safe, recent jumping videos etc… Her price was 4500$. It took him 8m to sell her and only after a 6m trial period. He couldn’t label her broodmare because she never had a foal, and Noone wanted to buy such an old horse for sport, even with her qualities…
3 Likes
Thank you for your reply.
And I answered the valid question. MP asked why people were advertising older horses as PROSPECTS. One reason why might be because those horses are transitioning to a different discipline where they’re not proven. She then decided to argue with me about why older dressage horses don’t make good schoolmaster hunters. Not sure how that’s pertinent to the question, unless the goal was really just to throw shade on other people’s sale horses.
Your friend should have aimed the horse at the US market. People do import older experienced horses with solid records. Fewer than people who buy prime aged ones, sure, and for less money than prime-aged horses-- but it’s not like people don’t buy older horses and import them. For a lot more than $4500 if the horse TRULY has a great record.
Also I don’t know what this has to do with the answer to the question. She didn’t ask about importing specifically or about prices for older horses. Or about prices for horses well proven in the jumpers. She basically asked “since when can an old horse be a prospect” and the answer is “when, despite its age, it’s doing something it’s not proven in.” Seems pretty straightforward.
What would she have these people do? Throw away any horse over the age of 12 that needs a discipline switch because it’s too old to be a prospect?
Thank you for your comment 
3 Likes
The North American market is diffuse. Training is inconsistent. Many riders are amateurs. There is paradoxically a surplus of horses in total and a shortage of horses trained to the needs of amateurs, whether cautious adults or intermediate juniors.
I hang out at the low end of nice horses. All the time I meet up with horses that are getting up in age without having a show record or indeed being started. It happens really easily. Homebred warmbloods or Iberians, OTTB that were put on pasture to let down, ranch horses, private horses from owners who can’t really do the work but have no cash for training. Suddenly the young horse is ten years old, then 13 by the time they decide to sell him. Sometimes horse was put to pasture for behavior or soundness issues. Etc.
Saying prospect is just a kinder way of saying greenbroke or unproven. The upside is they may have no typical wear and tear, and they are much cheaper than the same quality horse as a 4 year old.
I agree a 12 year old horse is not a prospect for anything that requires 5 years of schooling but they might be entirely suitable for lower level work in a discipline if someone can put the training in.
5 Likes
Well, her question is relevant for some of us expats trying to understand the US marker and its specific terminology. So that’s why I left a comment in this international forum, and gave an example from back home. I also tend to agree that for a 15y horse to change the discipline sounds bit fishy and is also probably going to be somewhat stressful but I’m far from being an expert, so it’s just my personal opinion. Back home, these older horses either go to a retirement, become broodmares or they teach kids/amateurs (in their discipline if they’re sound).
In an amazing turn of coincidences both the OP in this thread and you (and the former forum member) are all in California. So you can easily get a handle on what sorts of horses sell and at what ages from horse sale bulletin boards. One that seems popular in your area is https://www.proequest.com/ There are five pages of horses for sale born in 2007 or before. Some marketed as being able to do different disciplines than their primary career.
Oh wait, you’re already well aware of the website…
Horse changing careers or being useful into their teens is hardly unheard of in the US, and I’m surprised it’s so rare where you lived. Where did you live overseas that there was no market for aged horses? Of course you didn’t have them transitioning to showhunters (unless you were in the UK) but where were you living that horses just got thrown out at age 15?
4 Likes
What’s so amazing about the fact that they’re many expats in the Silicone Valley? If you’re implying I’ve smth to do with those (unknown to me) members of the forum, you’re judgment is entirely wrong… Unless you speculate to see my reaction? Or you’re just that type of person…idk
Germany. We don’t throw them out though, they get a deserved retirement & not be used and abused until they can barely stand on they legs
1 Like
If she’d have to drop the price substantially as a hunter prospect, it seems odd she wouldn’t simply sell him as a mid-level dressage schoolmaster. Everybody on the planet seems to be looking for an AA-friendly Third / Fourth Level horse and , around here at least, they are willing to pay good money for one.
1 Like
I find your posting pattern/her posting pattern to be full of interesting coincidences. But regardless, the very sale website you yourself posted earlier can be used for that research you seem to want to do on the market for aged horses in the US.
Where are these German retirement farms full of 14 and 15 year old horses that get retired rather than step down to a lower level, become school horses, get sold out of Germany. I’m really curious. Can you share some links to these retirement farms? If this is totally routine, why was your friend trying to sell her horse on rather than just retiring it?
4 Likes
Your speculation is amusing but again very wrong. It’s seems that you like making nasty extrapolation based on nothing. Speak a lot about your personality
For the record, no idea who the others are, I’m new to this forum and here because I’ll soon be offering my young horse for sale so this thread is very relevant to me right now. I’m not interested in what older horses are on proequest because I’ll never invest into buying an aged one.
Do you even read? I said some get retired, some get into breeding and some get to teach (It’s in my 2nd last posting). This mare was still going strong in the jumper ring so she eventually got to go to a young kid.
2 Likes
If you’re not a sock puppet, why do you care that I think you are one?!
Can you share the links to the retirement farms? Given the lack of space, I’m very curious.
You’re an expat, meaning an American who moved overseas and then moved back? If so, I’m surprised that you didn’t think there was a market here for experienced jumpers suitable as school horses. Where are you boarding now that the concept of schoolies is so alien? Or you’re a German who never lived in the US before and now lives here?
If you know that horses often become school horses in Germany why is it so surprising to you that an American would buy an experienced jumper with a great record? We need schoolhorses here too? I’m puzzled that you couldn’t help out your friend who ended up getting peanuts for her experienced jumper. If there’s a big market for those types as school horses in Germany, why was it so hard for her to sell her horse? Why did it take 8 months and a 6 month trial to get her horse sold?
You’re selling the gelding you just imported who was waylaid with strangles for so long?
6 Likes
Because it’s true - I’m not affiliated to anyone here. Plus I also share your opinion about MPs love of gossiping
Where did I said there is a big market for oldies in Germany? Please don’t put words in my mouth. This mare left for a kid in Turkey. The pool of younger German horses who can qualify as schoolmaster is much bigger and that’s the reason such old horse gets peanuts there. So I think he got a fair price. A 13yo schoolmaster, packer, jumper saint who was a part of my university team (read loaned to us by his owner to jump all levels of students around) couldn’t find a buyer for his 3000€ (3500$).same thing for example for a PSG level 7yo dressage horse in Munich who’s selling for 4500€ (5300$).
I didn’t help him precisely because of the accident my horse got on a way to here. I’ll never cause this to another animal and therefore I don’t want to import anymore. Some things just don’t depend on me.
Well … true but … if an ammy owner is enjoying the journey, and the upper end of performance that needs 5 years is not something they plan to do forever, just get there and do a year, hang the framed photos, then step back down … then 17 is not old for the eventual goal job. So long as the horse is fit and sound, which many at that age are. Especially if they weren’t burning up the competition circuit when younger.
The U.S. is full of ammy owner/riders who are all over the place as far as goals and expectations. So this is a valid scenario, and I think it does play out all over the nation. Just a hypothetical - “This 12 year old has low mileage and has a great jump in him (unschooled though it is), and his joints are doing well. The price is right, so let’s go with this one, put in the saddle time and see how far we go.”
The U.S. equestrian world is so very different from what I hear of the European equestrian disciplines. Here there is such a lack of consistency and structure for so many U.S. ammy riders (and juniors). The teaching often isn’t great, expectations are often minimal (jump a 2’ crossrail for years and years), and people don’t stay consistently involved in their own riding due to work, school, family, career, etc. & so on.
So the horses are all over the place as well. As was mentioned in one of the above posts, it isn’t unusual to find horses 10+ years old that have never had a proper start as a riding horse. Or who have incomplete or inconsistent training. Or long gaps of non-use for reasons of the owner’s personal life &/or career, nothing to do with the horse. One owner after another may assume that the horse must have some experience due to its age, but in fact it’s green as grass.
And not for nothing, in the U.S. many rural owners have plenty of room for a horse that is just consuming pasture while the owner makes unrealistic plans. It is common for rural owners to buy a younger prospect only to find that they don’t really have time for it. Every January 1st the owner makes a resolution that this year they will train that horse. Eventually they realize that the horse is steadily collecting years of age, and they don’t really want to do the work, or just never will be able to give it the time needed. So, another “prospect” with little consistent riding goes into the sales ads aged 10+. I suspect that sellers think the word “prospect” will get a higher price.
Anyway. “Prospects” aged in their teens is nothing unusual in many U.S. markets, with nothing ‘fishy’ at all with many, just an irregular life journey There are always a fair number around this area being advertised for any and all disciplines, English and Western. And it seems (in this area) that Iberian and Friesian horses tend this way as owners find out there is more to training them than they expected. I can find probably five or more of the I/F’s aged 10+, unfinished, for sale right now if I look.
For all the reasons, these older “prospects” have NOT bombed out of some discipline. In truth, they never really started at all. Their unfinished status is about the owners, not the horses.
5 Likes
Exactly! I’m currently messing around with a lovely mare that’s at least ten, and hasn’t been properly broke yet, still trying to figure out her panic under saddle. It’s definitely a “project” and an experiment.
There are many of us down here at the lower end of nice horses that have an eye for a good horse, but not necessarily any strong competition goals, or the budget for that kind of horse.
I call them “fallen through the cracks horses.” Not rescues, not neglected in overall care, just sidelined most often due to the owner’s situation. You don’t know what they know, or don’t know, until you start working with them.
5 Likes
You know it’s crazy when… you go to see a green grade 15hh horse for sale for $10k, arrive and see its feet have not been done in at least 6 months, it cow kicks you when you touch the girth area, and it is 3/5 lame when it takes the first trot steps under saddle. The owner claims she’s had it “a couple months” (why has it never seen a rasp?) and that it’s not lame, it just “looks funny if you don’t get it in front of your leg.” Then proceeds to take the horse on a trail ride.
9 Likes
I don’t know who eventually bought him. He was a nice horse but not what I was looking for personally. I was trying him out for someone looking for a 3’+ eq horse on a budget, for which I thought he was very suitable. As I said, the market was not as hot at that time.
I guess my point is, sometimes I see a dressage horse looking for a jumping career, and sometimes they have enough of the right things to change careers and be successful. Or do both simultaneously, up to a certain level. Others may have flaws that won’t work that well in other jobs either.
I think jumpers and dressage horses have enough of the same basic requirements - especially the push from behind and the uphill carriage - that it’s not crazy to retrain one for the other discipline. Not so much with hunter to dressage.
I know so many people who did exactly this. I was house/horse sitting for a friend a few years ago, and at the time she had an 12yo, unbroken, AQHA registered mare. It’s been 4 years or so, and I can guarantee she’s got a 16yo, unbroken, AQHA mare now lol.
5 Likes
There is a funny book that, amongst other things, has this as a storyline. It’s called Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse. I recommend it.
4 Likes
Looks like the pony market is way up too!
Some sellers are asking $20,000-$30,000 for average looking small quarter horsey types, average moving, average jumping, green broke youngsters? (green broke as in no flying lead changes) No measurement cards either? Good for kids?
Can’t begin to imagine what the cost of a legit USEF division pony ‘prospect’ youngster might be? Probably a good time to be a hunter pony breeder.
2 Likes
