smellshorsey

Beware of Scams When Selling Your Horse

If you haven't already invested in that Nigerian scheme guaranteed to make you lots of money, you might want to be aware of the various scams afoot where somehow, instead of selling your horse, you end up getting scammed out of your money.

I got a breathless offer by e-mail from a potential buyer who really wanted Buddy and needed to buy him right away. Unlike the other breathless offers, which were mostly from teenaged girls without a shift key on their computers, this one was from a guy named John who supposedly lived in New York and had it all worked out.

There were so many red flags in this message that I don't know how he would ever fool anyone, but apparently there are people out there being fooled.

My vet said that she had a client who had fallen for just such a scheme. Her client wanted to sell her horse, here was a buyer with money, and, all starry eyed, they went through with all the arrangements. When the vet showed up to give all the horses their spring shots, the client said not to do one horse -- he had been sold. Later the vet had to go back and give this horse shots because the truck did not come to pick him up, as promised. I don't know more than that.

But I do know that John from New York was all set to scam me. In his first e-mail, he said that he wanted to buy Buddy to use for his polo, rodeo and breeding operations and would send me the money through PayPal and then his shipper would come get Buddy.

Since I'd gotten a number of sort of stupid inquiries, I thought that this one might just be the stupidest and wasn't aware right away that it was a scam. I wrote back that Buddy would not be suitable for polo or rodeo, and that as a gelding, didn't have much to contribute to a breeding operation.

I thought that was the end of it. But John wrote back right away. Buddy would have a wonderful life with lots of room in what I think was meant to mean pastures but was some odd word my husband said was a term for soccer fields. The "animal doctor" comes to the farm daily (must not be a safe or healthy place if it requires daily visits from the "animal doctor"). There was some hooey about trainers and competition and breeding. John was effusive, but John didn't know squat about horses. 

Still, he was ready to send me the money and if only I would provide some personal information his shipper would be contacting me. I reported him as a scammer to the online sales site.

Let all sellers beware. 

How to Sell a Horse

The first thing you have to do, if you want to sell a horse, is convince your daughter that she'd have more fun with a different horse. This may take months and will involve many tears. During this time give her many opportunities to ride other horses and have fun on them.

Yes, it's true that no other horses is as wonderful as the current horse (in this case, Buddy, who is truly wonderful as long as you don't want to jump). Nobody has as much personality or is as friendly (also true, but you don't ride on the personality). If you want a friend, get a dog. If you want a horse that's fun, get one that wants to do what you want to do.

I got a domain name that included Buddy's registered name and put up a web site for Buddy that included videos, photos, his pedigree and what he was good at and what he wasn't good at. It told his whole story, in mostly short categories with their own headings. Visiting the web site was like visiting Buddy, except I didn't have to clean our bathroom in case you needed to come inside. I don't know if this was essential or not but it saved me the wear and tear of sending information to people -- I could send them one link and it was all in one place.

Then I listed him on Horseville.com, Dreamhorse, Equine.com and something else I can't remember. I got a lot of calls from Horseville at first, but it was through Equine.com that he sold. It took about five or six weeks from when I put him up for sale to when he sold.

My advice is to put up as many photos as possible, and not just of the horse standing on a leadrope in profile. Put up photos of the horse being ridden, the horse interacting with other horses, the horse in shows. Put in funny photos as well as gorgeous photos. Put in the best you've got. I think this is what attracted people's attention.

I got a message from a woman in Kentucky that Buddy is the screensaver on all the computers in her house. I got another message from a woman who couldn't afford him that she really enjoyed looking at all his photos, especially with children riding him in things like the egg and spoon class. She said I had the best photos on Equine, which is almost kind of sad because I'm not a very good photographer. But I did have lots of pictures, and I posted them.

Buddy was bought by the sweetest lady. She lives in Charleston, S.C., and I know that she will continue my mission of spoiling him. She doesn't want to jump him, so they should be perfect for each other. He will live at a barn near Middleton Place Plantation and Drayton Hall. We're invited to keep in touch and see him from time to time. That makes it easier.

One of the keys to selling Buddy was to keep me out of it. Yes, I was here. But I let Lily's teacher, who has worked with Buddy for a year, talk to the new owner's trainer. Not that I didn't talk to them, but I just chilled. Once somebody is looking at your horse, I found you should let the horse do the talking.

And you know what? The new owner's trainer and the new owner see how fabulous Buddy is (as long as you don't want him to jump). As they said, "He's very well trained and doesn't have a mean bone in his body."

Goodbye, Buddy. We've been missing you. But we'll come visit and bring you treats.

When Winning Isn't Everything

Winning is never everything, but sometimes winning can be an embarrassment. We have this new horse, Markus (left), who has done a great many things, from racing to eventing at the preliminary level. And also at the beginner novice level and novice level with his previous owner. When I checked online, I saw that they had won one event at the beginner novice level, and been eliminated at other events on the cross country phase. Oops!

We know what he can do. We don't know yet what he can't -- or won't -- or possibly even worse, WILL do that we don't expect or know about.

So, when we'd had the horse a total of three weeks (and two of them are his "on trial" weeks), I was faced with a dilemma. Lily wanted to enter him in a friendly, local horse trials that she usually attends. But at what level should I enter them? She's never even ridden a dressage test on him and has only had three lessons. I don't know what he does on cross country that got him eliminated more than once. Everything I've seen him do is good, or otherwise I wouldn't have bought him. But there's this level of the unknown....

Over her objections (she wanted to go novice, which is two levels up from her previous experience), I entered her in special novice -- the same level at which she last competed. At that time she was first after dressage but ended up fifth from time and jumping faults. Enormous time faults. 

We got to the show grounds and unloaded. Markus looked around then started grazing. That's a good sign. He doesn't stand particularly still to get tacked up but he's not awful, either. They had a pretty good warm-up for dressage, but not a very good test. Their score put them next to last (fifth), with a huge difference between them and the girl in first place.

So, that was disappointing but just showed what Lily and Markus need to work on (everything in dressage). Schooling for cross country was good, and even though Lily had been warned by Markus's previous owner that he was very, very antsy and sometimes agitated in the starting box, he walked in and acted like a horse with brains. He knew where he was and was ready to go, but he wasn't stupid.

Lily had to ride him, and he hesitated as if he was going to stop at a downhill jump in a pasture fence line that he had to jump into some dark woods, but Lily growled at him and drove him (thank you, Buddy, for this good lesson) and Markus sailed over. Whew! After that she had a wonderful ride -- the time of her life. I have never seen such a happy smile on her face.

Lily was clean after cross country. But the other girls weren't so lucky. Lily found herself unexpectedly in first place. And though they had a very eccentric, fast and open-jumperish stadium round (giving the spectators their money's worth with hair pin turns, crazy approaches and almost getting off course), they were clean there. So they held on to first place.

I was proud of both of them. And I was also very, very relieved that they had not done well in dressage. The mothers and trainers of the other competitors politely asked me about this new horse, and I could tell there were some ideas that perhaps it wasn't sportsmanlike to enter them in this division. I was relieved that I was able to tell them that Lily and Markus were next to last after dressage, which meant that their first place finish was only possible because the competitors who placed higher than them after dressage lost their rankings through their own time and jumping faults. I did not enter a ringer for my child to beat their children.

My goal for the day was to enter my daughter and her new horse in a competition that would be challenging and safe, where they could come away with a good experience. That's what happened, and now we know (more or less) how he's going to act.

Lily was ecstatic during her victory gallop. She did the whole thing on the wrong lead. She has plenty to work on before next time, when she will indeed compete up a level.

Winning is great fun when you've really earned it.

Goodbye, Buddy (Maybe)

The third lady to look at Buddy fell in love. The fourth lady said to call her if the third lady doesn't take him because she fell in love, too, but couldn't make a decision before the third lady was coming for him.

Yes, Buddy left yesterday for a week's trial. The potential new owner is a kind, tender-hearted adult beginner with a good, hand-holding instructor. I hope this is a good match, but if it's not, there will be another horse for her and another good home for Buddy.

I'm absolutely exhausted from showing him this week (the economy must be improving because suddenly the phone is ringing). But I've blogged about that on Lifepundit so it's out of my system.

What I want to tell my horse friends about is saying "goodbye" to Buddy. (And though I miss him, I do hope it really is goodbye.) The night before they were to pick him up I took a quartered pear out into the darkness of the pasture. Buddy nickered at me and the only thing I could make out in the night was his blaze, coming towards me.

The other two horses kept eating their hay. But for Buddy, people are more interesting. He was the only one to visit me.

So I fed him the whole pear. Then I gave him a good scratching all over. I held my hands up and scratched, and he maneuvered the itchy places around under my scratching fingers.

I would go on, but it would sound silly. You know how it went. We spent time together, and I feel like I've said goodbye.

What a dear horse. I've never had one that was so engaging.

When Lily sunbathes in the pasture, he stands guard. The last time she did it she had to come in because he kept licking her toes (yes, we have two salt blocks -- white and brown).

He goes wherever we are, even if we don't have treats.

Thank you, Buddy. We've been blessed to know you. Now be a good boy where you are on trial, and bless that nice woman with your sweet, doggy self. You stay put, you hear? She'll spoil you worse than we did.

Love,
Anne

Advertising a Horse for Sale the Government Way

As I continue to talk potential buyers out of even looking at Buddy, I decided to run a free ad for him in my state's agricultural bulletin, a bi-monthly tabloid where you can sell your goats, chickens, $25,000 Hanoverians, manure, broken tractors, beehives, bulbs and implements I wouldn't know what to do with.

I submitted the ad online, which was a pain because of the character count limitation, but I got the ad whittled down to where it was accepted. Then I faxed them Buddy's Coggins. All set.

Except I wasn't. I got a call from the state person saying that the age on the Coggins was nine, and the age in my ad was 11. I said that I could fax her Buddy's registration papers, and she'd see that he was 11. She said I needed to get my Coggins report changed, since it is regarded as a legal document. I said I wasn't trying to claim he was younger than he was -- I was claiming he was older than the Coggins and have the documentation. The vet simply wrote his age down wrong (no doubt based on his handsome, youthful appearance.)

We went round and round on this. My vet is out of business and I don't want to add to her burdens by getting her involved. I finally suggested, "Why don't you just leave the age out of the ad? They can see how old he is when they click on the web site."

"I've had to delete your web address. We're not allowed to run those," she said.

"But it's got all his information on it!"

"Sorry, but if we ran yours, we'd have to run everybody's," she said.

"Why don't you run everybody's?" I asked.

"The dog people wouldn't understand," she said. "We run their ads as a courtesy, space permitting, and they are always upset that we give more information out about horses."

So, I'm running an ad with no age on this horse and no information that he has a web site where you can see photos, videos, pedigree, everything. But it gets worse.

"Let me read you what I've got," she says. And she proceeds to read a watered down version of what I sent her. She has whittled it down to basically "chestnut gelding, broke to ride, more or less." (Not really but may as well be.)

"What happened to 'great ground manners,'?" I ask.

"We can't say 'great.'"

"Can you say 'good'?"

"Yes. I'll say he has good ground manners," she says. "How about clips, loads and ties? That's always a good one."

"I think all of those except loading are included in ground manners," I say.

"How about 'great youth horse'?" I say.

"I told you we couldn't say 'great,'" she reminds me. So she puts just plain "youth horse."

"Can you give him a bath?" she asks, trying to be helpful.

"Of course I can give him a bath. But he does so much more than that I hate to waste the space on giving him a bath," I say.

"Stands for the farrier?" she suggests.

"He'd better stand for the farrier if he knows what's good for him. Standing for the farrier is a minimum requirement and is included in 'good ground manners,'" I say. "How about 'flashy chestnut gelding'?"

"Can't say 'flashy.'"

I give up. "Beautiful?"

"No."

"Handsome?"

"No."

"Looks like Elvis?"

Silence. Then she suggests, "What about his bloodlines?"

Now I'm on my cell phone, and I can only vaguely remember the names of his sire and dam. Is his sire Ohio Bett or Bett Ohio? And was his QH grandsire on the other side Skipping Lightly? Skip Lightly? Sounds kind of gay. Skip Light Lee? It's something like that. But I make a guess and she happily adds it to my ad.

Then I get home and look it up. I have everything a little scrambled on his bloodlines. I e-mail her the corrections, and she tells me she's made them. Scary, huh?

If his dam's name was "Beautiful Morning" would they change that to "Adequate Morning?"

We do not need the government in charge of one more thing.

New Horse!

Markus vetted out. More on that later. Here are a couple of pictures from Lily's lesson yesterday, the first day he was officially "her horse." Couldn't get both of them to look at the camera at the same time.

Do We Dare Fall in Love?

We're over a week into our trial with Markus and so far he is just what we want. Lily had trouble with him in her riding lesson on Monday because the jumps where she takes her lesson are in a large field, and I think Markus thought he was doing cross country. They were supposed to jump two small warm-up jumps, then canter around and do them again. 

Markus had other ideas. Coming off the second jump, he locked onto a giant roll-top with poles on top of that and that's where he took her. It was like watching one of those war movies where the fighter pilot locks onto the target and releases the missile. I think Markus could do this whole jumping thing with no rider.

This scared the britches off of all of us and though Lily steered around the huge jump, she just couldn't get him to stop. He wasn't running away. He wasn't tucking his butt and being scared. He wasn't bucking. He wasn't being evil. He was just ready to do his job and was going to keep going until he did it. After a lap or two at a fast canter, she got him stopped.

So they did the small combination again and she steered him away from the big jump early, only to have him lock on another jump for a repeat performance.

You have to admire his willingness and his work ethic. You have to complain most loudly and screechingly about his brakes. But I repeat -- he wasn't running away, he wasn't bolting. He was just going....going....going. He has been a racehorse and a preliminary eventer. Going is more important than stopping in those jobs, but still. He needs to stop.

So, she tried the combination again. And after some necessary roughness, she got him to stop. Once he caught on, he was fine. 

You have to ride him round into the jump, check him frequently, and check on landing. He likes a heavy rein and wants you to stay with him. The complete opposite of Buddy, Lily's still-and-former horse.

Markus has a great and willing heart, a busted knee, and a fine mind. Do we dare fall in love until after the vetting?

Before the lesson was over, Markus had given Lily enough confidence to jump jumps she's never jumped before. And even if she screws up, he takes care of it all. He can jump anything and will jump anything. He can go slowly. He'd rather go fast. But he's not a rusher and is strong but controllable. That's what she said she wanted. I wish I could show you the big smiles that came with all this.

He's your basic plain dark bay TB. A cribber, something I said I'd never have. He has an old racing injury with a slab fracture of the knee, and though the knee is ugly, it is beautiful to me because if it weren't for that we couldn't afford him. He's ten-years-old and probably has arthritis and who knows what else. He also has a very fine mind and an awesome work ethic. 

I planned to take them to a schooling show today. Lily was reluctant to go, partly because she's had a terrible week with social drama at school, had her piano recital last night, and then something else. If I were her, I'd really want to take this new horse to a little show and see what I could do.

But she said, "No, Mom. He might do really well. Then he might not vet out on Monday. And I don't think I could part with him."

Do we dare fall in love? I already have.

Our New Horse! (If He Vets Out)

This week is spring break. While the rest of you are escaping to the beaches or planting your gardens at home, we are buying and selling horses.

Okay. That's only half true. We haven't sold Buddy but we've found The Perfect Horse (note: calling him The Perfect Horse will ensure he flunks vetting), made an offer and will be picking him up in the morning. He's ours if he vets out. I hate this part.

I also hate the part where we're signing contracts and I'm getting insurance and trying to work out problems that aren't problems but feel like it. And when I walk outside to do something and Buddy comes to the fence to greet me I feel like I'm having an affair...

But for Lily, Christmas has come. She is ecstatic. She has forgotten all about boys. "When are we picking up the horse?" Well, I was all set. I had the truck gassed up and ready to go... then there was all this paperwork stuff.

Anyway. We live in a world where handshakes are just a way to catch colds. The people who are selling him are really nice; they're just protecting themselves in a world where handshakes are just a way to catch colds. Back in the old days.... Heck. Three years ago we brought Buddy home with no contract, no insurance, no agreed-upon price, nothing. Just a promise that we would give his blanket back if we bought him. Which we did -- buy him AND give the blanket back.

Our horse-to-be is a 10 year-old TB gelding with an old racing injury. The old racing injury is the only reason we can afford him. He's a grandson of Seattle Slew (who won the Triple Crown and was possibly undefeated but I'm not sure) and has evented at the Preliminary level. I talked to the woman who rescued him from the track before his current owner bought him, and if he's half as good as she says (and she has no reason to tell me a tale since she has a horse she'd like to sell us of her own) we have found The Perfect Horse. Here's a short clip of Lily trying him out.

Let Me Tell You Why You Shouldn't Buy My Horse

Buddy is a beautiful, delightful horse. I feel like I'm trying to sell my dog. I act like I'm trying to sell this big ugly goat.

Buddy is a big handsome guy. He is sound and healthy. Buddy has a good mind and has excellent bloodlines. Buddy is a gentleman and a great fellow. He's only for sale because he has informed me (without the use of a Horse Communicator) that he doesn't wish to comply with Lily's dreams of jumping higher and going further. So, as I've said before, he's for sale.

And I'm not the best one to sell him. In fact, I'm sure I'm the worst. I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning in a stew, fussing over the house and barn (with no visible change) so that it would look like a place that would have a nice horse for sale for when my potential buyer comes.

 

And then, the potential buyer who was coming to try Buddy called and said that after sleeping on all the things I told her about him, she just didn’t think she wanted him. She thanked me for being so honest.

 

I cannot help myself. I tell everything I know, especially the bad things, even if they’ve never caused a problem (she was concerned about an injury he had before we got him – an injury that has given us no problems).

 

So, rather than come look at my horse whom she knows everything about, she’s going to go instead to look at the horses offered for sale by a man I believe to be unscrupulous. I know him from when I had another horse and boarded at a stable where he worked. I believe that he certainly will not tell the whole truth about his horses, and here I’ve lost a potential sale because of my overabundance of honesty.

 

I have to believe that God will find Buddy a good home and that I’ve done the right thing, but it doesn’t feel like it.

 

My lost potential buyer asked me what I knew of the man she’s going to see, and she told me she knew that he had a very good reputation. I said I didn’t know anything about that, but that when he was a farrier, I had to quit using him and use someone else because he was unable to shoe my horse. I didn’t tell her about the suitcase of beer he brought with him and would drink while he worked on the horses. I didn't tell her about other things. Maybe he's cleaned up his act. I don't know. I said that I couldn’t speak about his reputation as a horse trader.

 

So, I’ve been in one kind of stew and now I’ve gotten in another kind. But I’ll be all right.

 

I’m not good at this buying and selling of horses. I find it quite stressful. I got several very excited e-mails from another potential buyer that I think I ran off by telling her absolutely every bad thing I know. Not the good things. Anything that could possibly be wrong. I have a compulsion to do that.

Why don't I tell people all the wonderful things about this horse? He is very special. Is there something called being too honest?

Probably I'm not being too honest -- I'm probably being too negative, and no, it's not because I don't want to sell him, though deep down I probably don't. But we have to, if we're going to get a horse that will do the things that Lily wants to do. I want him to get a good home and everybody to live happily ever after. Us. Him. His buyer. Our new horse.

Another prospect is coming next week to look at him. I think I'll excuse myself and let Lily and her teacher show the horse. That is, unless I talk to the prospective buyer again and talk them out of coming.