I HATE horse shopping!

Rob and I left this morning with high hopes that we would find a decent lesson horse prospect; a little small, but child ridden, jumped, and a good age and breed.

So we get there...to a boarding stable that will remain unnamed...to find the horse in a smallish pen. Muddy of course, but everywhere is muddy. She looked cute, and as her owner went to catch her, I casually looked in her water tub...completely EMPTY! Not a drop of water. Hay cubes in a tiny bucket nailed to the rail that somehow the horse must wedge its head into eat out of...so the horse has hay cubes (which are dried/compressed hay) and no water. Oh, and NO shelter either (and she was on outside board).

The horse gets closer and suddenly I start to doubt her age, but her teeth showed the owner was likely accurate about her age...she was just a very skinny horse; ribs and spine sticking up. A skin pinch showed she was indeed dehydrated as well.

So we get her to the barn and Rob goes searching for a bucket and the poor girl sucks down two buckets of water without lifting her head. That is when i noticed her feet...hinds looked good, but fronts obviously hadn't been done for months...apparently the "barn arranges all farrier work", so the owner (who hadn't been out much) had no idea when she was last done, or even who the farrier was. This poor horse's heels were well over an inch longer than they should be.

At this point I was really hoping that this horse would be great and we could take her home and fatten her up...but not surprisingly she had a limp and an attitude that goes with a horse that is in pain. Poor girl. Nice horse though, but we can't buy horses out of pity anymore...so another bucket of water for the horse, and brushing off, and we left with a heavy heart. (still no water in her pen!)

I am absolutely SHOCKED that this well established boarding stable allows horses to go without water for long enough that they show signs of dehydration, and would allow a horse to get that skinny without discussing it with the owner. and leave a skinny horse without a blanket or shelter. The hoof issue...well to me that should be on the owner, but if the barn manages that to an extent that the owners don't even know who the farrier is, well, the they should also be accountable for the neglect. There isn't even a place for owners to write that the horse needs its feet done as far as the owner knew or we could see...and she looked!

And this is why I hate looking at horses...it can be so hard to leave them behind.

Karen