THE JOURNEY CONTINUES: Searching For Another Project Horse
Prelude: The
economy is still in a tough place! Good people have to make hard choices about
their time and money budgets. Horses usually get put on the back burner in
these cases. So many of them do not get the attention they need to be really
well rounded equine citizens. We have been both blessed and challenged lately
ourselves and have had to struggle to figure out ways to maintain the lifestyle
we love with horses in it. We also have had to find cost effective ways to
continue to grow in our horsemanship. Since we firmly believe in “good energy
out equals good energy in” and since the County position Michael was in line
for is on “indefinite hold” we figured it would be good to take in another
project horse.
The goal was to find a suitable candidate which met our
specific criteria, train him or her up, deal with any health issues and
eventually find the horse a great family that matches the horse’s aptitude,
attitude and personality. The ideal horse-candidate would be a Quarter Horse or
Mustang, between 3 and 15 years old with some experience under saddle with a
good enough frame to handle a 200+ pound rider. We wanted to avoid major health
issues because of the expense. Underweight and hoof issues we could deal with.
We were prepared to deal with fear and/or abuse issues as well. We also wanted
to find a horse less than 200 miles away from our home in Placerville, CA. So
we put the word out on various social media forums and started our search. We
improved our request and clearly phrased EXACTLY what we were looking for. This
seemed to help as we got some solid leads fairly quickly!
So now comes the time when we evaluate and commit (we HATE
dragging this process out so we ask A LOT of questions up front and request
some decent pictures of the horse without a saddle on its back from all four
sides and some views of its legs) to taking one of the leads home.
The search so far….well it SUCKS! We have put out “feelers”
in the form of Facebook “In Search Of” posts and even a Craiglslist ad. We are
VERY VERY CLEAR on what we are looking for and what our budget is. You would
think (and you would be wrong) that people actually read the ad BEFORE they
reach out. They don’t. We have gotten some crazy people offering up all sorts
of train wreck horses and then the get mad when we say that A) you didn’t read
the ad/post at all because what you are offering in no way matches the needs of
our program and B) you must not be in touch with the current market because
that poor train wrecl of a horse is not worth $3000.00…hell it might not be
worth $30.00. It actually makes us REALLY mad!
How could you have a perfectly okay horse and not do
anything…no real ground work, simple conditioning…anything for two years! Why
not sell or rehome the horse sooner if you won’t keep up its training? Why
would you rescue a horse with obvious issues and do nothing to help it along?
Why, for all that is fluffy and good, do people do such stupid stuff to the
animals they are responsible for? And to top it off, when then do finally come
to the realization that they are not doing anything right by the horse they try
to sell the horse to some poor fool for WAY too much money or worse yet, get
super defensive when someone with a little horse savvy asks some fairly
specific questions in order to make a fair assessment of the animal and what
they may need to do in order to get the horse back to being a useful equine
citizen. Horses are NOT dogs or cats. They need training and conditioning on a
regular basis in order to remain happy and healthy. The do backslide if left to
their own devices and REALLY bad habits are created in the horse by the
negligent human.
It just makes us mad. It also make us really sad for the
horse who, through no fault of its own is set up to fail. Sigh. We can’t change
the actions of people. All we can do is try to make the life of one horse
better. If we can inspire or educate the masses along the way to A) THINK
before they try to get a “cheap horse” and B) DO THE RIGHT THING by the horse
so it can be a good equine citizen (which means the HUMAN has to work at
becoming a HORSEMAN) then we have done something worth doing.
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