Alright, I’m stressing here and need some 2nd, 3rd and 4th opinions. I have the option to buy a 1.5 year old quarter horse palomino filly. She is by Final Conquest who is by Dash for Cash. Am I crazy? Also, Roo has the option to buy this filly’s half sister who is also out of the same sire (She is almost 3 and is nearly 16.3h… big for a QH). I eventually want to train the palomino filly (if I buy her) for dressage, and Roo is going for eventing. Are we nuts? lol :shock:
Not at all, provided you have some experience training. As we all probably know, Quarter Horses are good minded by nature, and though some of them are a little slow in the head they are all willing to please. Those are nice lines, and if she’s going to be nice and tall like her half sister she’ll probably be a less stocky type. If you’re worried about her breed being good for dressage, no worries. Paints, QH’s and Appaloosas have all been going into the Dressage ring and doing really well, its becoming ‘cool’ to do Dressage without a warmblood or a TB. As for 16.3 being big for a QH, I have a stud book upstairs with a Paint thats something like 17.2, 17.3 
Now THAT is huge :lol:
Anyhow, if you decide to buy her then good luck with her!
Do you have a place to keep her? Are you going to be able to afford feed, vetting, farrier bills and still have enough saved for those emergency vet bills? Are you going to start her yourself, or send her to a trainer? Do you know of a reputable trainer? Have you worked with young horses yourself? Have you ever started a horse before? How much experience do you have? Are you going to be bored/impatient because you’re not going to be able to ride this horse for at least a year? What if the filly hates dressage? Will she pass a vet check? What is her temperment? How is her confirmation? Do you have horse people you trust that you can ask advice?
Just some things to think about…
Ditto to Cat’s comments.
I bought Emma when she was 4 months old, and spent probably $7,000 or so boarding, feeding, vetting, shoeing, and otherwise caring for her before I ever got on her back. Obviously you can ride a QH sooner than you can a TB/WB, but that won’t change the fact that you can’t tax a baby mentally, so you won’t be able to start showing until the baby’s at least 4, probably. I bought a baby on purpose because, having my horse die prematurely/tragically, I had no desire to jump back into riding, even though I did want to own a horse.
Also ditto on the experience thing…I’ve worked with babies before, but not extensively, and Emma has been a real challenge, despite that. Adult horses, badly trained or not, will accept a lot of stuff that a baby either won’t accept or will get totally confused/frustrated by.
Do you know if either of these fillies’ families are suited/experienced in dressage or eventing?
As for being nuts - that’s up to you…but if you guys are looking for good quality dressage/eventing horses, it’s a LOT easier to buy a green (or non-green) adult horse rather than buy/train a baby. At some point, no matter how experienced you are/laid back the horse is, you will need help, and it’s so much easier just to skip that step and go with a horse that you can make a few mistakes with and not set yourself back a few months (like I have a few too many times :?).
Anyway, just some things to consider…Good luck with her/them, if you guys decide to buy!
For the record, not all paints/qhs are easy. Take Mae for example.
She’s a QH/Paint. Sure, she’s a level-headed horse. Doesn’t freak out too much on the trails (unless there’s a skier, and that’s a whole other story), and you could ride her OK in the backyard barn sort of sense–go a certain way, hop over this jump, go fast (she loves to run), got to lead the pack on the trail. As she matured, she got a bucking issue that you’d have to work through, and it is usually smart to lounge her before hand.
However, you want her to collect up, go into frame, give to the bit, etc. (read: do actual work), you’ve got to keep after her and be so aware of yourself that she’s a difficult horse to ride. She’s had at least sixty days with a professional trainer, and probably needs another sixty to be “finished,” regardless of the fact that her owner is a talented rider and trainer. I don’t ride her anymore, due to all these issues and the fact that she needs “consistency.”
She also has a habit of beating up her pasture mates. Thankfully, she’s never done permanent damage. Just this summer, she beat up the mare she’s been pastured with and has always gotten along well with. Why? Who knows!
When she’s unhappy she makes everyone suffer, and turns downright grumpy. Thankfully, she’s kept at her owner’s house and has turn out 24/7, which usually keeps her happy.
Contrary to popular belief, she’s more of a challenge than her pasture mate, an off the track thoroughbred mare, who’s much less stubborn, sassy and opinionated on what she should or should not do. The thoroughbred’s just a giant bucket of love, who is SANE. Mae is just much too smart for her own good, or at least our own good. She’s a sweet horse to people, but we’ve had our issues with her
So please, please don’t buy into the belief that certain breeds are more tractable than others or are easier to train. You might just get proven wrong.
I’m sure Shanthi has some lovely, counter-WB-stereotypes with regards to Emma. Do you want to share?
Well, WBs are definitely supposed to be sane and fairly easy-going, and Emma’s not quite either at times. She reminds me a lot of one of my dogs - willing to please to an extent, and if it suits her needs, but smart enough that she can just choose to give you the finger and do it in such a way that you’re left scratching your head going “I know she defied me, but how the hell did she do it, and how to I let her know that I know and punish her so that she doesn’t do it again?”
Of course, recently there’s been the complication of multiple personalities…sometimes she’s Emma the Half Thoroughbred, racing around trying to magically bypass the walls of the round pen and gallop away…other times she’s Emma the Half Warmblood, poking along and having to get nagged to even put out a good working walk.
The same can obviously be true of a purebred as well as a crossbred, depending on the horse.
Well, I’ve been a horse owner before, so I know the costs… especially the emergency costs… I guess I’m just weighing the cost to do I really need this? lol I have an awesome trainer, very experienced in breaking babies, so not worried about that. need to do some serious thinking. when i get the pictures, would any one be interested in seeing her/them for a better opinion?
I don’t buy into the belief that any breed can be sterotyped. Some QH’s just arent bred to be good minded. Some are just psycho no matter how well bred. Some are trained to be one way or the other. But I do have to say that most QH’s I’ve worked with (which is alot) were fairly tolerant creatures who wanted to please.
And then theres that funny belief that an Arabian will never go over water because they were bred for the Desert :lol: That’s probably the best one of all, besides the rumor that Arabians are dumb horses.
I think arabians are one of the smartest breeds… and i’ve seen good and bad QHs, thats saying for every breed. I’ve generally heard that appendex QHs are “the best”… but my mom’s appendex is a nut… :roll: lol The reason I’m looking into the QH breed is because I like they’re general body type and mind. I want a wide stocky horse. I want to do bareback in comfort!
I must be the dark horse here… I grew up riding & showing American Saddlebreds… My lifes dream however is to actually breed a Graded Stakes winning TB…
I’ve been around several gaited type breeds… I have little knowledge of the stock breeds…
I’m a firm believer that there are good & bad in all breeds… (In all my 15 years of wisdom!)… LOL…
Lol to the bareback in comfort. The bareback riding stopped when I got my first TB Withers are bad…
Also lol to the Arabs not going over water b/c of the desert thing… our Arab hates to get his feet wet (ie won’t go into a ring if there’s a puddle in front of the gate).
If you’ve got a trainer you’re comfortable with and if you have a goal that requires the horse being at a certain level at a certain point, or if you’ve got that gut feeling that says go for it, then do. I bought Callie on a whim (saw her pic on Equine.com and despite me trying to be horseless well, I was in love) and I never really regretted it. But if you’re trying to talk yourself out of it, or are worried, or are just doing this b/c it’d be neat to have half sib horses with Roo, then don’t push yourself. Horses are too expensive, too dangerous, and too plentiful to force yourself to buy one you’re not in love with. But if your gut says yes then go for it. It’ll be a blast, you’ll learn a lot of stuff you’d never learn with a grown horse, and your patience will triple .
Thanks for the advice and the stories. As BlueWolf told you I am also exploring the options. As for money, I have the guidence of my parents and some help too. They are not even willing to concider this with out knowing all the costs, which I am in the process of getting for them.
As for the horse itself this will be my first. I will most likely be purchasing an unbroke three year old. Both BlueWolf and I plan to work with a great trainer who will be working with us. I also have about 6 years of experience riding. Now maybe this is not the most practical idea but my question for you is can it work? I need to think about this on my own as well but and advice/comments on this topic would be greatly apericiated.
It definitely can work, but it may “work” by you having to send the horse(s) to a professional trainer for 1, 2, even 6 months.
Babies are hard work. Even though you can only play with them for about half an hour every day (which, in and of itself is hard, if you’re used to riding for an hour+ in a lesson), they take a lot of work/patience/effort to mess with. Emma is the second horse I’ve owned (Java was “adult” when I got her, though a 4yo OTT TB is rather retarded in a baby-ish way - but she was trained, and I could get on her the day before/after I bought her and ride around the ring and pop over a cross-rail just on a whim without killing either one of us).
I guess the questions I’d ask myself are:
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Why a baby? For me, it was because I specifically wanted to see how well I would do working with a baby, especially since I’d like to breed horses “professionally” eventually. Also, I wanted something VERY different from Java, given that she’d just died. AND, I didn’t feel the desire to ride anytime soon, so buying something that I could really start riding regularly for at least 3 years was fine.
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Why this set of babies? Are they particularly suited to dressage/eventing? I know next to nothing about QH bloodlines/families (as I’ve mentioned in another thread), but I know with WB bloodlines thare are specific lines that are suited towards dressage, and certain lines suited towards jumping. Unless these fillies have BOTH lines, it seems a bit…fanciful?..to buy these two fillies and expect one to do great at dressage and one to do great at eventing…even though eventing, obviously, includes dressage, your horse needs a totally different attitude/mindset/etc to compete as an eventer than as a dressage horse. (Basically, my point here is: If you guys are considering these two specific horses just because they’re half-sisters and that’d be cool, then keep that in mind in 1-4 years when you realize that Filly A can’t bend and Filly B hates jumping - or hates water and refuses to jump streams, or whatever).
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Babies are also really stupid and really fragile. I owned Emma for a whopping 24 hours or so before an older horse chased her into a fence, which required stitches on her chest, and caused scar tissue to build up on her knee so she looks all retarded now (thankfully it didn’t affect her range of motion or soundness). You can say that’s not her fault, per se, but 2 months later she was playing in the field and managed to break her leg, just out of nowhere. And then a year or so after that, she managed to literally pig out at the round bale one night and required emergency colic surgery. One can argue that not every baby will be this stupid, or that I just have really bad luck with horses, but the bottom line is that all horses will hurt themselves if at all able (If this isn’t Murphys #1 Law of Horses, it should be
), and babies will do it in ways you’d never thought possible. -
I guess the biggest question I’d ask myself is how much time/effort/money do YOU want to spend with this horse? With Emma, I wanted to do everything myself so that I could learn/prove to myself that I can train a baby…that only works so well. To date I’ve worked with 3 separate trainers on a regular basis, and have had 30 days of professional training for Emma, and I’m still not confident that if everyone else on the planet who knew anything about horses suddenly disappeared Emma wouldn’t just ignore me and my efforts for the rest of her life (she’s far too good at that :p). Anyway, what I’m trying to say is…I bought a baby, spend a TON of money raising said baby into “adulthood”, and we get along and can do basic stuff, but by this point I was confident I’d have something ready to hit the show ring, and what I have is something not even ready to hit the outdoor ring. It takes a lot of patience to raise a baby, and (for me) a lot of frustration watching other people do stuff for you. In hindsight, I would’ve been much better of not buying a baby for a year or so and instead working at a local breeding barn getting experience with a lot of babies.
Anyway, sorry for the (incoherent) ramble…with regards to costs of owning these horses, I’d definitely factor in the cost of having a trainer work with the horse for 60 days, and the cost of weekly or even twice-weekly lessons to get help training the horse.
I guess I’m a weird horse person… I actually love the time I spend work on ground manners with horses. I know I’m not the best rider in the world, I’m actually pretty crappy, especially when you consider how long I’ve been riding. (I have confidence issues, can ya tell?) I’m good at ground level training. So I’m actually extremely excited over the prospect of training a young horse. Also, since I know I’m not a great rider… “dressage” is a fancy of mine to really just become a better rider. I’m a wimp over jumps, so thats out… haha… once the four feet are off the ground, i do everything that I shouldn’t be doing (like flinging myself back in saddle, going over the shoulder, chipping strides before a fence… i’m a disaster).
I know I will not purchase this horse unless I’m inlove with her. I learned my lesson when I purchased a dog based on pure looks alone and now i can’t stand the animal and sold it to my parents.
Horse are in fact, freak of natures, when it comes to accidents. haha I can’t believe I forgot the first horse I owned (I’ve had 2… one paso fino, and the appendex that is now my moms). Everyone is familiar with the sliding horse stall door with the handle you pull to shut, correct? Well, my paso fino somehow managed to ram the handle into the soft tissue behind his shoulder, which created an nice 3inch hole.
oiye, Here’s the real question. Who is more nuts… our horses… or us?
Don’t worry dawn you are not inthe dark entirly on your own. We have Morgans some are park and some are dressage. We currently have 2 yearlings right now and they are awesome. Completely night andf day from yeach other. One is super smart and the other one is kinda okey dokey pokey. He is 15.2 right now at a yearling. That is big for a morgan. We have had lots of babies before and they have turned out to be pretty good. I see nothing wrong with working a babie to a point and sending them out for 30-60 days and letting someone else work them and them learning the experience of being in a different situation especially they learn to be hauled that way. That is just our opinion.
P.S- Do you have any other horses? Are there any babies where you might bored?
Yeah the exact same thing happened to a horse at my barn…they always manage to injure themselves. My horse pulled a shoe while he was outside and then came back with it hanging half off his hoof, and my instructor wasn’t sure how she was going to get it off and then suddenly he half-reared and knocked it off on his stall door! Haha…
If that’s your goal, I’d recommend one of 3 options:
- Buy this/a baby, raise/train it until it’s going well on the ground, and then sell it
- Buy this/a baby, raise/train it until it’s going well on the ground, then send it away for a good 2-6 months of professional training (i.e. a trainer works with it 4-5 times per week)
- Skip the baby part, and buy an adult horse that you can learn to ride better on, who will forgive you riding not so well.
Personally, if I were you, I’d pick option #3.
Speaking as someone who has ridden for almost 20 years, doesn’t have much confidence issues (aside from recently with regards to being paranoid that my baby will fall on me again), loves jumping, and is fairly good at staying on a horse regardless of circumstances (like the horse falling on you :roll: ), riding a baby is SO MUCH HARDER than a trained, adult horse. I just got back from the barn and I’m reading to curl up in bed for a week…that was after lunging my 3yo for 45min and THEN getting on her for half an hour (and only doing walk/trot/halt, at that, in a 20m round pen…so no steering, really, just “go” and “stop”). Telling her to walk forward is amazingly complicated because I’m doing things I don’t mean to do (asking her to bend to the inside while walking forward, asking her to keep her head level while walking forward, etc.)…all things that would be fine for a trained horse, but just confuse and piss off a baby.
Not to mention that training any horse to dressage is also SO MUCH HARDER than “just” getting a horse to do dressage that’s already trained. When I was training my mare to do dressage my stamina was about 10min before my legs felt like they were going to fall off…and even then, our “giant success” for the day would be getting half a stride of good, round, floaty trot. Before she died, even after 4 years of working on dressage-y stuff, the most we could do is a couple of full 20m circles at a good trot before one or the other of us would poop out and we’d lose it again. (Note: I’ll be the first to admit that neither of us was overly thrilled/devoted to the art of dressage, which probably didn’t help…but even so, we were working with dressage trainers, and it was still hard as hell.)
Anyway, not to jump all over the decision to get a baby, but if what you want is to improve your riding, a baby is not going to do it…I was on the wrong diagonal (or no diagonal 
) all day today because, frankly, that was the least of my concerns, the primary being stay on, don’t let Emma be a brat, and get her to do what I’m asking. My position was also crap because I was focused on not getting in her way and letting her do what I asked. Training/riding green horses makes anyone’s riding worse, unless you’re really good at training and riding and the green horse in question is really cooperative. 
Alternately, if your goal is to have a baby, do a bunch of groundwork with it, and have fun, then might I suggest getting into driving? Then you’ve still got ground work happening, you don’t need to worry (as much) about getting hurt, and you still have something productive to work on even after the baby’s a champ at lunging in a round pen.
For the record, I’d been riding for 13 years by the time it was time to break my mom’s foal to saddle and we still sent him out to be broken by a professional. He came back capable of walking/trotting/and roughly cantering under saddle. I might’ve been able to do it, but it would have been a lot harder. So considering I’d basically grown up riding and Shanthi’s been riding 20 years at this point and is having trouble breaking her own filly, I’d say don’t count on breaking the foals (at all). I seem to recall that you have to “ruin” 3-4 horses before you can break one successfully.
It’s a neat idea and heck, even after our experiences Shanthi and I are talking about going to an auction and possibly buying foals together, but neither of us wants to tackle a foal on our own until we have a “support group.” Though at least you’d be each other’s support group…
So, I indeed up buying this horse I was telling you guys about 2 months ago. Wow it’s been two months! I thought maybe you (the forum) would be intereseted in seeing my little investment / lapse of sanity.
So here she is, Annie
She is adorable!! Very sweet looking also. I wish I was still breaking babies, I still ride babies here and there in the winter, but too tired when galloping in the morning and riding in the evenings to do it in the warmer months. 
The bonding experience is very nice. Have fun.
P.S. How bout that snow headed your way? :lol: I’m thinking my baby is not going to get to make her debut tomorrow.