07/21/2025
A reader writes: “What do you think of the current prices being fetched by good, safe horses…?”
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People love to say, “That's ridiculous. At that price, I’ll just do it myself!” To which I can’t help thinking, fill your boots, baby. Nobody’s standing in your way.
Those scary rides, come hell or high water and no end of vile weather, are gonna cost you. Add to this, the years of dedication and knowledge that go into the further schooling that instills pride in this horse’s job.
Behind every experienced horse is at least one person who didn't think about it, or talk about it. They just went and did it. That's worth something, to me.
I happen to be one of those people who believes that the legit good, safe horse is going to have held down some sort of job in his lifetime. Nobody learns about life by just showing up for meals. Being filled with possibility is not enough to keep the average child, or ageing rider, safe in the saddle.
We need to realize that what is costing us money is the quality of this horse’s actual education, not his prospects or his ‘promise’. I think we sometimes forget that.
You don't have to buy somebody's youngster or 'old c**t' who is priced in the realm of a good, working horse. People will try that but you don't have to play along. Let's bat around a few figures, while we're talking the price of horses.
Let’s say that a ten-year-old horse has, for the whole of his working life, only been ridden for an hour each week. That’s precious little actual riding but we’ll use it to make a point.
For maybe seven years, our imaginary horse has had fifty-two hours’ of actual riding. Let’s say that the person who is doing the riding is worth $15 per hour. That's not much but we now have $5,460 invested in this horse who has only been ridden an absolute bare minimum. He’s probably not going to be very well-educated at this rate, so let’s bump him up to being ridden two, or maybe three times, each week, instead.
That’s more like it. Our horse is not exactly rocketing into the working world but he’s being saddled and ‘inconvenienced’ fairly regularly. Often enough to maybe begin to be considered safe for the average rider.
Suddenly, our fairly ordinary horse has from $10,920 to $16,380 worth of man-hours invested in him… and we haven’t even factored in what he cost to purchase initially, or what he costs to feed, to have his feet and teeth done, all this while.
This is purely regular maintenance, mind, without needing any emergency vet care because our sale horse put his leg through a fence!
Horses are expensive—and getting more so, with every year—just like our houses and cars and groceries. Because of such things as real estate values and monthly board costs, horses are fast becoming a luxury item, even if we may mightily wish it wasn’t so.
While we absolutely want to, few of us ‘need’ to own our own horses, unless we require them to earn a living, which is probably a real minority in the pool of today’s horse owners.
When people complain about the price of safe horses, I can only shake my head.
I’m not talking about the six-figure futurity star or the sale-topping ranch horse at $50,000. I’m picturing an uncomplicated fellow who will allow a person to take lessons and enjoy a day on the trails. What is this horse actually worth to the average would-be horse(wo)man?
Because if we can’t do what is required to make a safe and experienced horse ourselves, we have to be willing to pay fairly for somebody else to do it.
Don’t we?
