Ending horse ownership with a friend

[Blimeyblighty]

in Dec myself and a friend bought a 14.2h 12 year old mare for £2k. She was intended for our teenage daughters to share (3 girls, 2 of which are mine).

Quite quickly the mare, who was sold as a happy hacker, became increasingly less happy. We faffed about with a physio & a saddle fitter before getting a vet check & treating her for ulcers. By this point my friend’s daughter felt she hadn’t bonded with the mare & the daughter had stopped doing their share of the routine (parents were doing it instead). It also didn’t really work between the girls in terms of their dynamic & separate to any questions about the horse, we’ve agreed that sharing isn’t working for them.

Ulcer treatment has been completed & my daughters want to bring the mare back into work over the summer. They feel she hasn’t been given a fair chance yet & still has potential.

My friend wants out from it all, which I feel a bit like is leaving me holding the problem, as well as 100% of the bills & responsibility when I signed up for 50%. She wants me to pay her the £1k that represents her initial purchase price. I’m reluctant to do that, partly because I feel like she’s just walking away from it all, & partly because I don’t think the mare is still ‘worth’ the same as she was? She’s currently out of work, new history of gastric issues, and not the healthy happy hacker we bought.

In general we were very naive in buying her, & I realise that this is a problem of our own making in not setting up clear agreements - we were eager & carried away!

so TLDR: do I pay my friend or not? I am minded to pay some but not all of the nominal figure. My DH is furious & doesn’t want to pay any…

2k is crazy cheap so I think you should offer her the 1k back or agree to put pony up for sale. I think she would easily fetch 2k even as an out of work project unless there is further vet history you haven't shared with us. Good happy hackers can often be 10k dependent on age

She’s 12 now with health issues. That ££ is way over IMO.

She could go either way it’s a gamble

Have you been horse shopping recently? Prices are ridiculous! Barely backed, feral things are going for 3-4K.....

I think you should say to your friend that you bought half a horse and committed to half the costs because that worked for your budget.

She should put her 50% share up for sale or loan and try to find someone that is happy to commit to paying half the costs.

Having a new part owner would help you with the ongoing costs and work involved.

Edit to say if your friend can't find anyone she might become more realistic about what her 50% is worth. Her share is not just an asset it's an obligation to the ongoing costs. She wants the money from the asset with no recognition of the costs.

Depreciation of her initial investment should be taken into account and I would pay her between £500-£750. I certainly wouldn’t reimburse her the full £1k

I’d echo everything that Sunny Afternooning has said. In my mind at the moment this horse is a field ornament and probably isn’t even that nice of a companion if she is being bargy and unpleasant to handle.

You could be lucky and the ulcer treatment and settling into a new routine over time will do the trick and when you bring her back into work she will be worth every penny of the 2k and more. Or…. She could have any number of underlying issues causing the ulcer flare up which won’t be picked up on cursory vet checks without x rays and so on.

Was she insured? Who has paid for the treatment so far as that alone soon racks up.

Personally I’d put up an anon post on a breed specific group with a full appraisal of the horse you have in front of you now (and not what may be) and ask for values and go from there regarding how much you are willing to pay friend because it’s a gamble without being able to see into the future.

Fingers crossed it works out for you and her and that it’s just the change in routine that has upset her.

What is the value of all the gear you have purchased? Is her half worth more than the £1000, and is it useful to you if you keep the horse? That could be something could leverage. Has she paid half of the vet bills up until now?
If you do decide to keep this horse, you would need a contract drawn up stating that she has no further claim on the horse, which means that if your future investment pays off, and you sell her later, then she has no claim on that (and no signatures required to sell her), etc

I suspect even with the health issues, the pony is still worth more than you paid - £2k was crazy cheap!!!

That's regional surely? I don't own a horse-but I ride, and I've seen riding schools around here selling similar-sounding horses for not much more than that.

I don't think it is necessarily down to the issues with the horse's health, as surely they'd have disclosed them if the price was to reflect that. Unless they had a guilt complex I suppose.

"I don't think it is necessarily down to the issues with the horse's health, as surely they'd have disclosed them if the price was to reflect that. Unless they had a guilt complex I suppose"

Nah, the strategy is to sell them cheap enough that the buyer thinks it's not worth getting them properly vetted.....

Is she insured and have you claimed on insurance as if so your renewal costs will rocket. does your friend realise that you will have to pay for your box rugs food etc once this share ends.Going forward i would want to check that teeth,back saddle feet etc are all sorted so that she comes back into work without any pain or discomfort. We once had a sort of arrangement like this and the girls fell in and out of friendships and discovered boys.

No fair point about the regional thing, and from what OP has said about the horse not being the type even with investment / time to ever do much in the school or competitively (so assuming cobby / heinz 57 mixed breed type) I will revise my assessment of the price downwards from 'insanely cheap' to only 'very cheap' - I do think anywhere in the country buying a middle-aged horse billed as a safe hack for very much the bottom end of reasonable price value you should assume some problems.

A riding school or dealer for instance selling a large pony/ small horse aged between 4-15 at that price (different considerations apply to tiny kids ponies or huge draught horses and youngsters/oldies), my 100% assumption would be there's something wrong somewhere regardless of whether it's disclosed or not. Any business will be looking to make a profit and there really isn't money to be made in selling horses at that price point unless you've picked them up for peanuts from an auction or similar and done very little work with them beyond the most basic tidying up and perhaps had a quick sit on. Even the costs of transport to your yard and feeding/caring for them for a few weeks would quickly add up hundreds before you've started with any vet work or reschooling. So my guess of any commercial entity selling a horse at that price is either they're covering their loses from a mistaken purchase that has turned out to be unsuitable for the school or to be sold on to a leisure home at a proper profit because of significant behavioural or health issues, or they're employing a buy-them-cheap-flip-them-quick type of model to make a quick buck. Not saying either thing is inherently dishonest, they may genuinely not know if there is a health problem to disclose either way if it's isn't something immediately obvious and they haven't invested in expensive diagnostics (and again, hard hearted commercial hat on, why would you invest hundreds of £ in a cheap horse, the ROI doesn't add up), and not saying you can't pick up a lovely horse at a bargain price if you are prepared to take a risk and spend time and money on them, but it's a risk you should go into with eyes fully open and not expecting you'll definitely hit the jackpot of a fully healthy and safe /suitable horse every time.

Agree with this and I’d go as far as to say that most riding school horses wouldn’t pass a vetting anyway .