Thursday, September 30, 2010

Mare on the market

The mare is going to hate my guts for the next few months. She started hating 'em last night when I pulled her tubby butt out of the pasture and put her back to work. She hasn't been ridden for months and I'm pretty sure she thought she was living in some kind of equine spa...no work, all play and plenty of good food and relaxation.

I put that fantasy to rest rather quickly.

She is officially back in training and I've given myself three months to get her more fit and put some finishing touches on her before I start advertising her for sale.

Right now she has basic training on her and has quite a few trail miles under her belt. She is quiet, sane and willing.

Her biggest downfall is her conformation. She is a cute mare, but she has a stick-straight shoulder, upright pasterns and a downhill build. I'm not going to be able to market her on stellar conformation: She's going to have to sell herself on her experience and training.

She goes English and Western and does trails. I've never taken the time to teach her to longe and long rein so that's on the list of things to get done with her. I'll also pop her over a few jumps, set up an obstacle course, take her out for more trail rides alone and fine-tune her to do more than the basic stop, go and turn. She has some lateral movement, but not much.

Kayleigh has ridden her a few times and she was wonderful for her, so I'm thinking that if I can market her as an all-around, do-anything horse suitable for a young rider she'll sell well. We'll see. The market isn't great, but she needs to find a new home as soon as possible and I'm going to do all I can to make sure I can get her into the best home possible.

1 comment:

  1. Good luck!!
    We've been having all sorts of problems with the youngsters we've been producing for an owner... talk about expecting a silk purse from a sows ear :P
    She asking stupid money for horses that fail vettings.
    So angry atm, the one really nice mare she has failed a vetting on terrible feet (last winter they fed her cow cake and silage!)and she's gone home for the winter to grow the feet out. we advised her on feeding and supplements and husband booked her up to go and trim her feet every 5 weeks.
    Well, 2 weeks later she still hasn't been started on feed and she's talking about shoeing her!
    Great so rather than haul yr arse out adn feed the mare you'll clamp her feet, put nail holes in damaged feet and then not call the farrier till the damn shoes fall off!
    if thats what she does we're not having the horse back. Its going to start giving us a bad rep :(

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