Buying a horse can be a very complicated business. My advice:
1. Unless you're stark raving mad, you shouldn't be interested in purchasing a horse for breeding purposes. Since geldings are usually less expensive, there's little reason to consider most breeding age mares. One exception is that you can sometimes get a bargain on a mare that hasn't been successful at producing foals. Besides, geldings are much easier to deal with.
2. Think carefully about breed registration and pick the right breed for your competitive interests. For the performance disciplines this doesn't really matter, but it's a very serious issue if you want to show in breed oriented shows. Registration papers are also very helpful in documenting the age and breeding of a horse- don't believe anything that you're told about an "14 year old" unregistered horse.
3. Age has a huge effect on selling price. First time buyers are often encouraged to buy older horses because they're generally better trained and less like to do something really stupid. On the other hand, if you buy an older horse, you might not get too many years out of the horse. Getting rid of an older horse that is no longer sound can be emotionally difficult.
4. Training has a huge effect on the horse's price. Don't listen to anything that you're told about a horse's training unless it's negative information. Don't bother to get on a "green broke" horse! On the plus side, work with the horse and see what you can get it to do. If you don't feel qualified to do this, then get a more experienced rider to check things out for you.
5. Ride the horse as much as you can before buying. 30 minutes in an arena really isn't enough time to fully appreciate the horse's behavior but it is enough time to figure out how well the horse moves (at least on that day with whatever drugs the horse might be on.)
6. Get a vet check from a vet that *you trust*. Make sure that vet check includes observation of the horse under saddle with a rider (preferably you.) X-rays are also worthwhile if you have any question about soundness. If you can arrange for the horse to spend a long weekend at the vets before the vet check then this will go a long way towards eliminating any possibility that the animal has been drugged or given some "quick fix" treatment. Even if you're buying a very inexpensive horse, the few hundred bucks that this will cost are money well spent.
7. Think of the vet check as being like a home inspection. The vet should tell you the truth about anything that is visible, but many things aren't visible without expensive tests and other issues are very subjective. No horse is in perfect condition- the question is whether there's anything that is likely to make the horse unsuitable for your use in the near future.
Sometimes there are specific and easily treated conditions that can lower the selling price. Sometimes the conditions are more serious and the price goes down a lot. For example, we bought Pace even though we knew he had a case of skin cancer. We probably saved a couple of thousand dollars on the price, but ended up paying that back in vet bills over the next several years. In retrospect, the price we paid was probably fair.
8. Remember that as a group people who deal in horses are even more dishonest than used care salesmen. However, many of them are perfectly honest. The trick is recognizing the honest ones.
9.Be careful to make sure that the sale and transfer of registration papers is properly documented. Do you have to pay property tax on livestock in your state?
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1. Unless you're stark raving mad, you shouldn't be interested in purchasing a horse for breeding purposes. Since geldings are usually less expensive, there's little reason to consider most breeding age mares. One exception is that you can sometimes get a bargain on a mare that hasn't been successful at producing foals. Besides, geldings are much easier to deal with.
2. Think carefully about breed registration and pick the right breed for your competitive interests. For the performance disciplines this doesn't really matter, but it's a very serious issue if you want to show in breed oriented shows. Registration papers are also very helpful in documenting the age and breeding of a horse- don't believe anything that you're told about an "14 year old" unregistered horse.
3. Age has a huge effect on selling price. First time buyers are often encouraged to buy older horses because they're generally better trained and less like to do something really stupid. On the other hand, if you buy an older horse, you might not get too many years out of the horse. Getting rid of an older horse that is no longer sound can be emotionally difficult.
4. Training has a huge effect on the horse's price. Don't listen to anything that you're told about a horse's training unless it's negative
information. Don't bother to get on a "green broke" horse! On the plus side, work with the horse and see what you can get it to do. If you don't feel qualified to do this, then get a more experienced rider to check things out for you.
5. Ride the horse as much as you can before buying. 30 minutes in an arena really isn't enough time to fully appreciate the horse's behavior but it is enough time to figure out how well the horse moves (at least on that day with whatever drugs the horse might be on.)
6. Get a vet check from a vet that *you trust*. Make sure that vet check includes observation of the horse under saddle with a rider (preferably you.) X-rays are also worthwhile if you have any question about soundness. If you can arrange for the horse to spend a long weekend at the vets before the vet check then this will go a long way towards eliminating any possibility that the animal has been drugged or given some "quick fix" treatment. Even if you're buying a very inexpensive horse, the few hundred bucks that this will cost are money well spent.
7. Think of the vet check as being like a home inspection. The vet should tell you the truth about anything that is visible, but many things aren't visible without expensive tests and other issues are very subjective. No horse is in perfect condition- the question is whether there's anything that is likely to make the horse unsuitable for your use in the near future.
Sometimes there are specific and easily treated conditions that can lower the selling price. Sometimes the conditions are more serious and the price goes down a lot. For example, we bought Pace even though we knew he had a case of skin cancer. We probably saved a couple of thousand dollars on the price, but ended up paying that back in vet bills over the next several years. In retrospect, the price we paid was probably fair.
8. Remember that as a group people who deal in horses are even more dishonest than used care salesmen. However, many of them are perfectly honest. The trick is recognizing the honest ones.
9.Be careful to make sure that the sale and transfer of registration papers is properly documented. Do you have to pay property tax on livestock in your state?