Strange horse viewing

[montysma1]

Went to view a pony today for my daughter.
Having origionally contacted the owner, she told me that they live a distance away and that the owner of the livery yard was taking viewings.

Finally went to see pony today after lots of back and forward as yard owner said she was very busy for a week.

Yard owner was very snippy about owners. Actually moaning that they only pay her £12 a day and now they want her to sell their horse and its time out of her Sunday. Erm......nit really my problem.

So, pony into paddock and she told my daughter to jump on. When I asked her to ride first she seemed astonished and irritated but she did ride , hatless.
Pony had an immediate minor spook after which "riding" him entailed leathering him in circles round the small school shouting Yah like a cowboy and doing big "pats" on his neck at every transition , which I am pretty sure were actually her hitting him.

Daughter got on pony, intending to start slowly till she got the measure of him, then work him at trot abd canter on both legs. All the usual.
Woman was shouting "canter" at my daughter as soon as she was on. 10 minutes later she said we were done and daughter should dismount as pony isnt fit and its not fair to keep riding him ( despite her having leathered him at canter to start with).

No offer to try him jumping or in open space.
Now pondering telling the owner as he will never sell if she is like that with ever potential buyer. He seemed from the brief look, like a nice sort, but just unbuyable on that try out.

51/2 hours round trip!

Not sure why I am posting really other than it was just so dammned odd! We have been searching since January and losing the will to live!

I would do the owner the favour of telling her what happened, so she can put other arrangements in place. Poor pony, but I would not buy him in those circumstances.

Definitely tell the owner. My daughter was allowed to take her pony to her yard for 5 days to try her out before buying. But that's only possible if your yard has an existing relationship with the seller. What are you looking for?

Daughter is very competent novice , solid in all paces, can jump. But not an advanced rider by any means.
This puts me in the position of looking for something with more scope than a kick along, whilst not wanting to over horse either. 14 to 15 h. A pony she can improve with, do local shows, not a super competitive home, some fun jumping , loads of hacking, as we live in beach ride heaven.
In effect a,unicorn it seems!
Found two suitable so far, both failed vetting.

It was just such extraordinarily unprofessional behavior. My jaw was on the floor and daughtes eyes like saucers. I also got the impression that she expected us to bring tack and begrudged hers. I may have picked that up wrong though due to the general insanity of the whole thing!
Her shouting Yah while carerring round and slapping him is an image that will stay for a long time. Probably knocking some steam out of him as he was straight from the field. Then she told us it was unfair to ride him for more than 10mins as he isnt fit so that was the end of the trial!

To be honest i am not impressed by the owners either who seem to have lost interest and abdicated all responibility to the yard owner who clearly resents doing it.
The loser is the pony. Nobody has his back really. Just neglectful things like his feet well past needing a trim.

He seemed an honest pony, probably not that well educated but he was a good boy. But on the very short utterly begrudged try out, I couldnt possibly consider him. Nobody looking for a pony for a novice would, and he wont be of interest to a high end rider.

We live on an island so its lot of time and expense to get to any try out. I am pretty peaved at the wsste of time and money.

Yes poor pony indeed but it sounds like the owner is at fault too so what is the point of telling her? She has made the decision to put the pony in the yard with a very dubious owner and then is not being proactive about selling him.

Do you think the yard owner was doing all of those antics deliberately to put you off because she has her own buyer lined up? And then she will get a better cut of the deal than if it is sold to someone like you who responds to an ad?

Just throwing this in here as a suggestion op:

sounds as if a Connie might be good for your daughter ; steady native but with a bit of go.

Sometimes, when an ordinary search is going badly, you can get new leads or angles by going down a breed specific route.

We did this and approached some breeders who kept in touch with their progeny and knew when they were being sold on etc. Just an idea?

Funnily enough we we have been trying to get a Connie. We live on a Scottish island so a native would be ideal. My very experienced friend who has been keeping an eye on our search has one and loves them of course, so we have been looking.

As it happens we had planned to see two ponies yesterday, one being a Connie mare. Unfortunately she sold during the week after a price drop from what was a very inflated starting price. Unfortunately we are kind of stuck with weekend viewings due to where we live and kids being in school, so we just couldnt view quickly enough.

I suppose the one positive is that prices are coming down a bit and there may be more for sale going into winter.

Be careful because some Connies can be sharper than expected but your friend will know that. Get a good one and you are set for a lot of fun 😄. I am very jealous of your dd being able to ride around a Scottish island. Sounds amazing! Good luck with the rest of your search!

Re the yard owner, I dont think its on sales livery as such (which starts at £150 a week here). She was griping about getting £12 a day for "keeping it" and now being expected to do sales!
Truly bizarre behavior, the arrangement is between her and the owner and if she cant be arsed with the hassle of buyer visits then she shouldnt have agreed to do it, or she should charge sales livery rates and stop moaning!

I dont get the impression she was on commission, she actually said "I dont care if you buy him or not" !

Connies are really overpriced and you can't guarantee anything just by breed. My friend has owned two beautiful boys but they weren't easy. They are also a bit prone to hoof issues.
On the other hand my Arab is an absolute saint, a really safe ride.
Forget buying by breed is my advice, the right one will find you and when they do you won't even notice what breed or colour they are. :-)

Yes of course the individual horse is more important than the breed, that goes without saying! To be fair, I wasn’t saying there were any guarantees just going by breed (which is why I said to be careful). What I was saying was, that doing a group specific search can help you find some different search paths and that’s a different thing altogether.

Are you willing to travel as far as London? My daughter is on a jumping yard and they have some fabulous horses come up for sale as the teens move onto Seniors. All the horses are ridden by teens, so will be suitable and they are really superb, but often not cheap. I can give you the details

How odd, surely if she feels this £12 a day arrangement is so unreasonable and for some reason can't just tell the owner that herself, the answer is to get him sold asap rather than being weird and off-putting with potential buyers, if she's like that at every viewing she'll be 'stuck' with the pony through winter? It certainly sounds as though for some reason she didn't want you to buy him, maybe like a PP says she has some kind of cunning plan to get him for a cut-down price for herself or something? Or maybe she's just a bit mad, takes all sorts and all that.

Good luck on your search, horse-hunting is a PITA at the best of times and must be really hard with your geographic issues. Maybe if it gets to half term and no luck you could invest in a trip down south and do a tour of some good dealers, try lots of ponies and hopefully find something, yes it will be expensive and of course the shipping costs to get pony back to you probably immense but better than a disheartening constant trek around every weekend? If it was for a more experienced rider I'd suggest a young pony from a breeder or even maybe taking a big gamble and buying unseen from Ireland or the continent but for a novice child you really want something proven and safe so I think paying the dealer premium might be the way to go?

I know at least one really fab 14.2 pony that is about to come on sale because the teenager is going into Seniors and needs something bigger, but I think it will be expensive, as he's quite a
talented show jumper and has loads of show experience and placings

We definitely dont have the experience to go down the unseen route and common sense dictates against going too young.
To update, livery woman has messaged for update and whether we would like to proceed with the pony.
My flabber is gasted , honestly!
Just considering how diplomatic to be in reply.

We need a nice all rounder that can do a bit of everything. Doesnt need to be a top competition pony, just something fun with a bit of ability. We would do local riding club shows on the island but cant see us going further afield as the ferry is awful and cancels in the smallest puff of wind. Its also hard to book vehicles on in tourist season.
Quite a few people here do travel to shows but I honestly dont think we would be bothered with the hassle.

Be really frank with her, she needs to know how her pony is being treated.

“Forget buying by breed is my advice, the right one will find you and when they do you won't even notice what breed or colour they are.”

^^ this.

We looked at Connies for my daughter. Fabulous ponies but sharper than a lot of people expect them to be. We ended up with a hairy irish thing of no particular breeding (only found him as he was advertised as a connie part bred - it is possible he may have some Connie blood in him many generations back!) but he has been brilliant. I would certainly aim for the right sort rather than a particular breed.

Buying horses can be the most dispiriting activity given how exciting it is supposed to be to have a new horse. My friend is trying to buy atm and has said that even in the last week prices have come down. So be patient (which I know is hard.) Yes to looking at dealers’ yards where you can try a few different types out - if nothing more than you get an opportunity to get your horse-buying eye in, and might find there is a particular sort your daughter likes. People are quite quick to dismiss dealers but all of my current horses, and the ones I’ve owned in the past that I liked best, have come from dealers. A good dealer will have a reputation to maintain, and will have a selection of horses and good trial facilities. Dodgy dealers can be awful, but there are plenty of groups on Facebook that will help advise on these.

I have now been second guessing myself.
I told the yard owner that we wouldnt be proceeding to buy the pony as although he seemed nice , we had so little time riding him that we couldnt make an informed judgement.

She then sent a series of stroppy messages.
High points being

"Well if you wanted to ride longer it would have been disgusting of your daughter , he isnt a roundabout, I have to think of the horse with two different riders getting on taking advantage of him."
(Daughter was mounted for all of 15mins and rode carefully and considerately. We asked, as is standard practice if woman would ride him first. This clearly surpised and irritated her. She weirdly tanked him round and round at canter, shouting Yah and slapping him which was not what I asked her to do and was a lot less pony considerate than my daughter).

"You have been looking since March, you are clearly not in a hurry to buy"
(implication being that I am a time waster out for pony rides. The reality is that since march we have physically looked at 7 ponies including this one as there arent many of the size/type out there and they often sell before we can even travel. Of the 7, I have paid deposits and hundreds of pounds for 5 stage vettings on 2 of them, and sadly the vets felt they couldnt do the job.

For us travelling to view takes virtually the whole day and about £80 in ferry travel before you even drive anywhere, plus we have use of two ponies to ride when ever we want......... I could seriously think of cheaper ways to get pony rides than doing viewings!

But honestly, I am not unreasonable in expecting more than 15 mins to try a horse am I? Thats not the norm right? Starting to think I am going mad!😂

On pony types, one of the ones we put a deposit on was a 14.2 connie x, 10 years old. Quite fast over the ground which was fun, responsive off the leg but not sharp. Jumped nicely although she hadnt done much of it with her owner. Hacked out past traffic, didnt blink. But vet found quite advanced ring bone although, she wasnt lame on the day). We were literally going to collect her the next day and had a saddle fitting session booked when the vet phoned. It was gutting.
The other was a light cob gelding,14h, 12 years. Again responsive and well schooled with a lovely jump. Our instructor on looking at videos of our try out thought there was "possibly something not right behind" but couldnt be sure on the video. On balance she thought it was worth the vetting and deposit as he was such a perfect match. But he didnt do will in vetting either.
So I dont think the time waster label is fair either. 🙄
Aaarghhhg!

Urgh, there are def some sellers out there that view anything but an on-the-spot purchase as timewasting, you just need to brush it off, you don't need to justify to her, us or yourself why you haven't found a pony yet. Like you I don't understand why she's implying the pony was worked too hard, different if sold from the field or effectively so (I've taken a chance on a pony before that was sold to me very honestly as only just back in work after a couple of years off having foals, so was very unfit and had only just been rebacked so couldn't do more than have a 5 min sit-on and potter up and down, but in that case it was clear from the outset what I was getting into, it wasn't a child's pony and the price reflected the risk I was taking).

Of course it wasn't reasonable for you to put your child up on a pony you hadn't seen ridden or at least lunged first, and like you say she only rode quietly for 15 mins, any sound pony in work should have been fine with that. That should not be a problem at all for a healthy pony in work. And frankly if she wanted you to buy the pony she could have tried a little bit more salesmanship (unless you inadvertently gave the impression cantering madly around yelling yaah was exactly what you wanted ). Plus as anyone that has ever sold a horse or pony knows, you do get actual timewasters, people that have lied about themselves and their ability or clearly not read the advert before coming to view or who simply don't turn up, it's annoying but part of the process. That's why people shell out £££ for sales livery, to have someone else manage all that hassle for you!

Just put it behind you, she's clearly crackers. The right pony is out there, you just need to hold on for it!

Ah op, what an experience! I had many like this when buying my (connie x!) horse. I sometimes think horse people are madder than any other type of person. We had so many crazy trials, until we finally got this one where she let me catch and tack up horse, hired a school for us (her first) to ride and planned a hack out for us. Keep trying, I would definitely tell the owner but then probably block both their numbers going forwards.

Hi, she certainly sounds a little bit weird! And if my horse was there I would want to know so I could move them!
I have an suggestion that might be helpful, will pm you.