If you know me at all, you know I don't like to window shop. It's boring and serves no purpose. Browsing online ads was exactly the same. Why couldn't I just see 20 ads of horses that met my criteria? If you're shopping for running shoes, you go to that section of the store and you look at only running shoes.
But no, that's not quite how Dream Horse, Equine Now, and Horse Trader work. You can certainly narrow down your search criteria, but I was still overwhelmed by the number of horses that were completely wrong for me. At first, I looked at anything that was in my price range that wasn't a Quarter Horse. I can't believe how many Quarter Horses there are for sale here in California. No offense meant to the Quarter Horse folks out there.
But I persisted. At lunch, I waded through hundreds of ads, dismissing nearly all of them. Occasionally something would pop up that seemed like a possibility, but when I tried to contact the seller, there was no response. Eventually however, either the ads got newer, or maybe I just got better at choosing candidates, but I started hearing back from owners and was able to find out more about their horses.
I also tried an American Warmblood (TB x Morgan cross) who was only an hour from my house. According to his owner, he had been trained to Second Level, but for the past three to five years had been living in pretty rough conditions. He was on the older side of my want list at twelve, but I kept him as a possibility.
2008 Brown Zweibruecker/Oldenburg Gelding for sale. He has lots of potential with excellent bloodlines for your next project show horse. His grand-sire is Ideal, which was the Breyer horse of 2005. He is very athletic with great elevated movement and has a good work ethic. He is sound and has no problem feet. He is very lovable and fine-tuned to ones body language.
Baths, clips, ties, and trailers.He had 60 day training and was ridden for four more months.
I am selling because I do not have time to work with him since my pregnancy last year and baby this year. So he has not been worked with since spring 2013. He was being ridden this month for the first time again and did great; walk, trot, and canter both directions.
Several other might be the ones had already passed, so I knew that I just had to wait it out and see if this one truly was the one for me. I got a message the next day saying that a prospective buyer had cancelled, and I was next on the list to see him.
Fortunately, I had Friday off thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday. Hubby and I hopped in the truck at 7:00 a.m. for the hour and a half drive north. We pulled into Whitney's Wild Oak Ranch and were delighted by the facility. This horse was definitely being well cared for.
Noemi, Imperioso's owner, told me all about his training, what his life has been like, and what I might expect to see while he was worked in the round pen. She encouraged me to saddle and bridle him. He was polite, except for the typical 6 year old stuff (snuffling for treats in my hair, tugging at my sleeve, rapping the gate with his hooves when we weren't talking to him - all stuff that just makes them cute.)
She has given him the very best life experiences possible. He had 60 days training with a dressage trainer, and then Noemi rode him for four months. He spent the next year and a half in the pasture. And while that didn't get him any more trained, it definitely gave him time to finish growing up.
After ten or fifteen minutes of free lunging, we both thought he looked warmed up enough for me to get on him. He wasn't great about moving sideways off my leg, but he didn't bolt at the feel of it either. I just kept him at a walk, asking him to move his hindquarters sideways. He definitely needs a refresher course, but there was no bucking, spooking, or other naughtiness.
As we walked back to the pasture, I knew he was just what I was looking for. It took us about ten seconds to work out a deal. I think Noemi felt the same way I did. I thought he was a good fit, and she wanted him to have a good home.
Yesterday I shared his breeding information, tomorrow … getting him to his temporary home!