Rad Dork
Posts: 5218
 
Location: Oklahoma | I said Whoa - 2014-03-17 11:10 PM Here is how I look at it. If I have a horse that I don't click with, I find them a new home with someone they will click with. I love my horses, I love to barrel race. I can not afford to keep the ones that I don't click with and buy ones that I do click with. Of course, this is after a good honest effort to get used to each other. But, if it is getting to the point you know you don't click, pretty soon it isnt going to be any fun either.
Second, I have had a few horses that I did click with, that I won more than I ever dreamed I could, got to compete and do well at places that I only dreamed about entering. When the chance came to sell the first one for BIG money, I bawled my eyes out and finally backed out of the deal. I still have her, she is 22, she has earned her retirement with me. She has given me 4 beautiful colts (oddly enough I just put the oldest one on the market, so I know what it is like to feel like you are selling your dream) BUT, if I could do it over again, I would have kissed her below the eye like I always have, whispered I loved her and loaded her on the trailer and then cried myself to sleep for the next week. Bottom line, she is a horse, she has a limited amount of runs in her no matter how well I take care of her. She got hurt 2 year later and was retired at age 14. I have made sacrafices to keep her with me, done odd ball jobs to come up with extra feed money, etc, etc. The price tag on her would have made a substantial difference to my family and I know that now that I have kids of my own. But the money is just a distant second to the fact that the day is approaching when I will have to watch her get old, watch age take its effect on her and be the one to make the decision to say good bye to her forever, it will be me that has to be there to bury her, kiss her one last time and know without a doubt she is not off making someone else's dreams come true. I think that is waaaaayyy harder than loading her on a trailer would have been.
So needless to say, when the second pretty dang nice horse I had came around and someone asked me to put a price on him, I did, I loaded him on their trailer and I cried, but I don't regret that. Maybe some will think this makes me hard, I really am not, it was just a powerful learning experience for me. So for me at least, selling one I don't click with is not nearly as personal for me as it might be for others. Good ones are hard to come by, I don't let them go easily, but horses are expensive and most of us could probably be pretty dang rich if we didn't have a herd of them....they should at least be complete and total fun!!! Good luck!!
I have to agree with this!
I haven't ever had to sell one that I really truly loved (both of those geldings died on our place when I was younger. They wouldn't have been worth anything to anyone else, anyway.). But when I was about 15 my dad started getting offers on the gelding I was on. He wasn't anything more than a 2/3D horse, but he had a lot more potential if in the right hands to bring it out. I hadn't clicked with the horse in the three years I'd been on him, but I wasn't going to let someone else run him and think "man, I should have held on to him!".
That was a horrible, horrible decision. At the time I thought that my parents would think that I was giving up if I sold him and putting off the impression that I didn't want to run anymore. I didn't want to miss any of the upcoming races because going off to the bigger races was what I lived for. I didn't want to have that lag time of horse shopping. The gelding and I started having more and more problems together and it eventually got out of hand. He flipped over me one day in the alley and I pretty much decided that was it. I made a few more runs on another, nicer gelding that I had... but my heart was no longer in.
Hindsight is 20/20, but I will always regret NOT selling that guy. I know my case is probably an extremity, but if you're not getting along with horse I think you're just setting yourself up for more and more problems down the road. It didn't help that I was just a dumb kid at the time those decisions needed to be made.
My parents got some offers on my nicer gelding while I was in college (a few years after I had stopped running barrels) and I didn't want them to sell him. I was determined that I would run barrels in the summer while I was home from school ( I was such an idiot!). That never happened. I called the lady up a few years later (once I was out of school and still not riding anymore) and told her that I would be willing to sell him if she was still interested. They came out and looked at him and gave a lowball offer that my dad wouldn't accept. That was about a year and a half ago. The horse is now a pasture ornament due to arthritis. I never really wanted to sell him, but now I wish I would have just sucked up my pride all those times and let him go.
I have sold two mares that I never got along with (I really think I'm just not meant to be with mares! lol) and I honestly have never had any type of "what if" scenario run thru my mind.
I love my horses, but I think from here on out it's going to have be an extremely special bond before I won't part ways (knowing that the horse would be going to good home). |
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