James is a six-year-old Irish-bred, that we recently bought.
A hot topic repeatedly found on social media and chat boards these days surrounds the topic of where to buy one’s horses. North American breeders, primarily what I would call boutique breeders who breed anywhere from one to four horses a year, often cry out in frustration (and understandably so) that many riders purchase their horses abroad as opposed to at home. That is certainly the case with Leslie and I whom, being event riders, tend to purchase *most* of our young horses and our clients’ horses in the UK or Ireland. In fact, as I write this, I am sat on a Virgin plane on my way home from a shopping trip where we have purchased three pending vetting.
One fallacy, however, is that people ‘want’ to buy abroad. I for one do not ‘like’ to buy abroad. I will regale you with a laundry list of reasons to prove my distaste for it:
1. I hate planes and thus never relish the eight hour flight to UK and especially the nine hour flight home. Planes make me slightly uneasy and taking off on Virgin this time all I could think of was that I hoped we weren’t flying on the same fuel Branson tried in his new space shuttle recently. On top of that, I am usually surrounded by umpteen screaming or crying kids on the plane as my home airport is Orlando.
2. I hate driving in the UK. Of course, I never do the actual driving myself, that is Leslie’s job. However, he loves driving on those roads and does so quite fast, which makes me carsick in no time at all and leaves me hanging my head out of the window like a retriever. If you are there horse shopping you spend ALL of your time in the car so you can imagine I spend quite a lot of time with unkempt hair whilst abroad.
3. I am cheap. I have bag lady syndrome and hate spending money. The cost of flights for humans have skyrocketed, the flights for horses are no better and just the exchange rate alone these days is enough to make me throw up. The three of us had breakfast in the airport this morning and it cost us $50! Can you imagine?! And no, I was not drinking mimosas sadly… Thank god Leslie has friends so we can stay in their homes for free, as staying abroad, the rooms and the food, is very expensive.
So, hopefully the above will make you realize my distain for ‘work’ travel to the UK. I would much prefer to just visit friends and family while there, I assure you.
BUT, we do it because quite simply buying there, for event horses at least, is perhaps not ‘better,’ but is for sure, easier. (I am ducking under my seat right now just knowing the screaming and scorching letters that are going to come piling my way). Here is why:
You can find the horses.
I live in Florida. There is one ‘Florida Sport Horse’ website for horses for sale. I DARE you to find me ONE, just ONE, four- or five-year-old on that entire website that you could convince yourself may make an upper level event horse. You cannot do it. I look at that website at least once a week and it is full up with either off the track rejects or full up Warmbloods that are probably very nice, but not made to gallop ever. You can find Thoroughbreds that, by the age of seven, are just mastering 2’3″ for $5,000 or you can find imported German fancy pants for $120,000 but I swear to you, you cannot find a potential upper level event horse. It is depressing quite frankly.
I also comb the ‘Warmbloods for Sale’ website, as that is quite a useful site that will allow you to look by state, breed and type, and again, more often than not I cannot find one horse that is bred for our job that looks like it may even have an outside chance at making an upper level horse.
Thomas Law. Exceptional canine.
I comb those websites weekly and after years of looking (and even once in a while going to look at one or two of the horses) I have NEVER found one that I would pay any kind of money for. Sure, there are loads of cute horses – many that could potentially make nice lower level mounts, but that is not what I want to buy for myself to keep, nor is it where the money is from a business stand point. Buying something for $10,000 and selling it a year later for $20,000 as a sweet training horse is not going to keep my son in his school or my horses in their shoes. These websites are absolutely flooded with ‘horses’. Very average, very plain, very mediocre horses. Lovely in every single way, but not something that anyone can either: move up the levels with OR make a living from. And if I can’t do one of those two things with a horse, I have no need for it. I would rather have another Cairn Terrier, to be honest.
Now, of course there are a few breeders out there that have started down the road of breeding for our sport. Denny Emmerson (up in Vermont), Bruce Davidson (Pennsylvania), Phyllis Dawson (Virginia), Pollards (Georgia) – those are the ones I know on my side of the country…and I am sure there are a few out in California… but here’s the rub. If I have clients going to look, we would have to get on a different plane every day to go to Denny one day, Bruce another, Pollard’s another and then hit up California.
When I take clients to the UK or Ireland, I can drive them in one day and see anywhere between four and 10 young horses, all purpose-bred, not a single big Warmblood or scrawny Thoroughbred in the bunch. Sure, six of the 10 horses I may hate, but if I like the other four, that is a large improvement from the time I saw one horse online in south Florida and drove 10 hours there and back to look at a cripple that couldn’t move its way out of a paper bag.
When we took the couple this week to look for a dreamy amateur packer for her and a young prospect for him, the husband remarked that in two days with us he had seen more ‘examples’ of a true event prospect then in all of his years in Canada looking at horses.
For sure, much of this is a result of the country’s size rather than a dig at the breeding of North America. Like I said, there are a few that have been breeding some very nice horses over here, perhaps most notably Ms. Mars, but because UK and Ireland are so much smaller, and breed so much more quantity of the quality we like, we can do and see so much more there.
Check back in next week, where I will discuss why it is so much easier to find good horses – from the young rider’s packer to the amateur one star horse and beyond.
