12/18/2021
Today I'd like to talk about the #1 problem in horses today:
The vast majority of the demand is for beginner safe horses.
The vast majority of the supply are not beginner safe horses.
Everyone you meet has stories about their quest to find a beginner safe horse. And before I go any further, I want to reference back to my 2014 article on this topic, which really doesn't need any updating and which keeps getting shared around the internet with no credit given. So definitely read this: https://horsenetwork.com/2014/07/wanted-horse-beginner-safe/
but today I want to talk about how to actually change that, since God knows we've made zero progress in the seven years since I wrote that, and the problem has only gotten worse.
Every single inquiry I've gotten on Maverick has been from someone who was too big and wanted to do too much with him. Maverick is probably 30 or darn close. He needs a little kid. 5-7 years old or maybe even younger. They need horsey parents, parents who themselves grew up with horses. They need parents who understand senior horse care and will follow our directions about how to feed him. He needs to be at home with a family that has a little ranch with daily turnout, not in some boarding barn where he stands and gets stiff. (Exception might be made for a trainer that I know is violently opposed to horses standing in stalls.) He absolutely will still show and win, but he is old and he needs an appropriate job, exactly like Moscow Mule who fortunately found a kid who doesn't push her, with parents who follow directions - that's how she went from a leadline only horse to sound enough to do a little gymkhana again and win ALL the walk trot classes. That's the only kind of home Maverick is going to, or he will stay with us. He has earned nothing less.
But I know why I'm getting these inquiries. People cannot find anything that is chill, that is tolerant of a beginner mistake or two, and that is just plain well trained to begin with. A horse that stops when you say "ho" and that stands quietly in cross ties while a kid braids his mane. A horse that doesn't lose his mind when he sees a sheep. A horse that gets in and out of the trailer without drama. A horse that picks up his feet for the farrier. A horse that is truly serviceably sound - which I would define as a horse who is, with minor maintenance (i.e. occasional Adequan shot or a tab of Equioxx) not lame to the AVERAGE viewer. (Yeah I know some of y'all can see every tiny imperfection in gait, I can see a lot myself, but you know what I mean.) There is a real shortage of those horses and that has been the case for many years.
How do we solve it? Training is expensive, and trainers who are really willing to put in the hours, take the horses out on trail, haul them to new places, etc. are in as short supply as well trained horses. This is not surprising because we pay trainers horribly for the level of risk they are taking on by being trainers. As an industry, we relied upon the love of horses and riding to keep people doing a poorly paid job that trashed them physically and then the Internet was invented, and people started talking to each other and saying things like, why don't I have health care in this super dangerous job? So, yeah, that's pretty much where your trainers went. And then we have the issue that people are ridiculous and want something to go from feral to broke in 60 days. I feel like there are a lot of factors at work, but the love of riding is really fading...I used to ride something like 8-12 horses a day when I was 19 or 20. If any of you are doing that anymore, raise your hands. I'm starting to wonder how many still exist. It was people like Young Me that got these horses broke. We rode them and went on trail rides and dragged them to a horse show on Saturday and a gymkhana on Sunday. Anybody still do anything like that now? Yeah I know, with the price of gas, who can?
I'm really curious about what the solution is here. How do we create more well broke horses? Most of the horses we get are well broke, but not tolerant. They are safe for polo/ranch kids, who were on a horse at five with a mallet in their hands - they are not safe for suburban kids, who freak out and scream the first time the horse does anything unexpected. I often question whether anybody can create an equine broke enough for this generation of children who have been so hyper-protected from risk and think a broken arm is a massive crisis instead of a badge of honor. I don't think you can, so the end result is, fewer homes for horses, which is a problem in of itself. But I digress. My main point is, how do we bridge this massive imbalance of homes needing trained horses and scarcity of trained horses? We all want horses to not go to slaughter, but the cost of sending them to training is high and, even then, bottom line is horses need the kind of mileage they don't generally get at the trainers, and which few people seem inclined anymore to provide.
We are all busy, but weren't we always? I had a full time job, and I still went to the barn right after and rode continuously until 9 PM. And then went to the gym. Ah, I miss my 20's. But really, we don't have fewer hours in the day. We're just choosing to use them in different ways. Trainers are frustrated because when they tell their clients how to fix the horse's problem, the client isn't riding or training on the ground with enough consistency to make it happen. We all used to ride 6 days a week. That was the rule...they got one day off, usually Mondays. Riding 6 days a week is what made really nice horses, and few people do it anymore.
So let's just throw this discussion open. Do you ride 6 days a week? Do you ride multiple horses? Are you comfortable on green horses? How do you think we can motivate people to become the sorts of riders who make nice horses, and is there a way to do that without making it all so expensive that only the top couple of percent can participate? How do we fight back against anti-risk culture, where people only want a horse that has the danger level of a rocking horse? How do we imbue people with the sort of love of horses that makes someone want to saddle up every day?
I don't know the answer, but I'd really like to discuss it, because if we don't fix it, there will be fewer and fewer homes for horses. We've already almost entirely lost "companion horse" homes. Now we're losing "green horse" homes as everybody fights over the tiny percentage of well broke horses - and we're not churning out enough well broke horses, but we're not doing that for reasons anybody can understand. The era of people riding 8 horses a day and working polo for $900 a month like I did in the 80s is completely gone. With rising costs and a dearth of brave velcro-butted teenagers to put the mileage on, how do we correct the course and keep the foals being born today safe twenty and thirty years from now?
Pictured is Harvey, who is actually safe, so he adopted to a previous adopter in three seconds, because that's exactly how it goes. I could have probably sold him for $8k in the current market if we were in the business of selling horses instead of adopting them out to strictly screened homes.
