PrintA little research and an open mind can make your next horse-buying experience a bit easier on your wallet.
The pre-purchase exam can be a confusing and stressful experience for the soon-to-be horse owner. Buying a horse is not only a large financial investment but also an emotional investment.
Just like buying a new car, conducting research ahead of time and familiarizing yourself with the pre-purchase process can save you anxiety and some hard-earned cash.
In its barest form, a pre-purchase exam is a fact-finding session, evaluating a horse’s health and serviceability that can be useful to the buyer as well as the seller. It’s not an insurance policy or a guarantee of ability, temperament or merit.
“One of the biggest issues that I have on pre-purchases is that I don’t have a catalog that others seem to have that offers a crystal ball for sale,” said Thomas Daniel, Jr., DVM, with a chuckle. “I can’t project a year down the road and say, ‘Well, the horse is sound today but may break down a year from now with a suspensory injury.’ We as veterinarians can’t always necessarily project into the future. We only have today and what we find on the exam and how those hard findings might relate to the future soundness of the horse.”
But even without a “crystal ball,” a pre-purchase exam provides buyers with valuable information about the current health of the horse they are considering purchasing. Buyers who pay for a horse without first consulting a veterinarian run the risk of purchasing an animal that’s not necessarily what the seller represents him to be.
“If someone’s trying to save money on a pre-purchase exam, there are certainly ways to do that, but I would never recommend skipping the exam altogether,” advised Kenton Arnold, DVM, owner of Equine Veterinary Services in Terrell, Texas. “For example, talking with the horse’s previous vet and obtaining his health records may prevent a buyer from doing a pre-purchase exam on that particular horse.”
The “Custom-Tailored” Exam
A potential owner must bring an open mind to the pre-purchase process, which means being able to distinguish between conformation defects that are manageable or may not significantly affect a horse’s performance and those that may become detrimental and unmanageable in the long run.
“The buyer needs to be prepared to assimilate information,” insisted Daniel, whose practice, Southern Pines Equine Associates, is based out of Southern Pines, N.C. “If they go into the pre-purchase with the expectation that they need to find the perfect horse, then they’re going to end up spending more money in vet bills for pre-purchase exams than they do on the horse itself.”
Arnold agreed. “We as veterinarians aren’t looking for the pristine horse that has no hair out of place. Instead we need to quantify what we find and work closely with the buyer to decide whether the findings are a problem or not.”
To put into perspective—say, for example, you are planning to purchase a Grand Prix schoolmaster—your options may be limited because, on the one hand, not many horses make it to Grand Prix dressage, and on the other hand, due to the strenuous training involved in reaching that level, older “schoolmasters” most likely have some sort of ailment that prevents them from continuing to compete at that level. So a willingness to consider treating a horse with minor arthritis is something that should be decided before beginning the pre-purchase exam.
