by Ashley, age 14

My name is Ashley. I’m 14 years of age and happen to know a lot about choosing the right horse. I guess it’s funny that a 14-year-old knows anything about choosing the right horse, but I’ve had many experiences that have taught me things about choosing the perfect horse. When I was 12, my father, who had a farm of his own, let me buy a horse. We had the land for it, and we could grow our own hay and oats.

We began to search on Heaven Can Wait Equine Rescue and were successful in finding two horses. One, Bailey, was a seven-year-old 15.2 hand bay quarter horse, and the other was an older horse named High-Five who unfortunately was partly blind. These were what you would call buddy horses.

We made contact with the owner and agreed to arrange a meeting. Being only 12, I was very excited and made sure to bring a bag full of apples and carrots! I immediately fell in love with these two amazing horses. However, having a blind horse around kids wasn’t such a safe idea. We had to make sure that these horses were right for us.

Here are some good tips for choosing the perfect horse for you:

1) Feel the horse’s chest to see if they are hot. This will let you know whether or not the owner has been working the horse too much. Lots of owners do this so that if you go to see or ride the horse, they are tired and won’t buck or do anything crazy that would stop you from buying them.

2) If you are scheduled to ride, make sure you come thirty minutes to an hour early to check out the facilities and, of course, complete step 1.

3) Try to find some history on the horse and owner, such as where the horse came from before the owner purchased the horse or even some history on the horse’s bloodlines.

4) Don’t just look at one horse; look around at other horses in our area.

5) When buying a horse for the first time, never buy green horses — make sure they are trained well!

6) If you are coming to pick up the horse, make sure the horse isn’t already loaded and ready to go, which leads to another part in my story.

Things didn’t turn out so well when we came to pick up Bailey and High-Five. They wouldn’t load in the trailer, and instead spent the whole time kicking and squealing. After trying for almost hour and a half, we decided to call it quits and get our money back. If I was going to show, I would need a horse that trailered just fine.

My heart was crushed until a family friend who owns a horse farm and breeds beautiful paint horse offered us two quarter horses. Sugar Babe was one year old, and Jacks was five years old. BIG MISTAKE! These horses were GREEN and we were GREEN in the horse buying world.

After many months of trying to train and break them, we decided to sell the two beautiful horses. I was sad, but we could not ride them. I was thrown off by Jacks and was scared of him; I couldn’t even get the saddle on Sugar Babe’s back! We told the family friend what had been going on for almost a year and that we couldn’t deal with two horse any more. She gladly took Sugar Babe and Jacks back.

With sadness and broken hearts, we decided to give it one more shot at finding the right horse. With all the things we’d been through, we weren’t going to be suckered into anything! We watched for everything and called all the faults. We looked at two horses. Maggie, a paint crossed with a quarter horse, was the first. She seemed to be awesome, but in the end was too flighty, so we decided against her.

With the second horse we looked at, which we said would be the last, we got lucky! She was a beautiful 15.3-hand paint quarter horse broken to the bone! She wasn’t scared of anything; you could practically ride her alongside a highway! You could walk all around her from the front to the back, touch her under her stomach, and pick and clean her hooves. Riding her was truly a joy. So, with great caution, we bought Ladybug.

On my birthday, November 8th, we went to the owner’s farm. What a surprise I had when she was trailered and already to go with her tack. I hadn’t known we bought her! I was so happy, and I hoped and prayed that she would work out. AND SHE DID! For two years now, I’ve had the most amazing horse that has ever roamed the planet. I have decided to start to show this summer, and I am looking forward to that.

I hope that this blog has helped you choose the right horse for you and has taught you some valuable things about the horse buyer’s world. I know it has me. I will NEVER sell my Ladybug and I NEVER want to go through any of that EVER again!

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