Games Trainers Play: The Florida Horse Saga

So so much of a hassle with contracts, leaving the horse there, having him shown, possibly having a used up lame horse at end of contract ALL because they can't buy a lousy plane ticket??? :no:

Is your friend financially prepared to hire an Attorney and then deal with all the B.S. with a possible out of state law suit if things go wrong? The thought of that makes me cringe...:eek:

As I said earlier, I wonder if they want her to drive all the way down there, beat her down on the price, knowing full well she'd rather head home with an empty trailer.

Ya know, I'm looking for a horse too, but there's no way I'd ask anyone to drive the horse all the way to my place. Or if anyone is that crazy, and has a nice one, please let me know, and maybe I'll be inclined to take advantage of you.

Buyer and/or trainer should visit you and try horse first. If they like the horse and want a trial at their barn, you need a trial agreement, and insurance, etc. all in place before the horse gets in the trailer.

I have had one trainer take a sales horse to my barn for me to try. They were local, and I had ridden the horse a couple of times before at their barn. I rode him, my trainer rode him, and we bought him. In your case, Florida is too far away, and too much can go wrong. I know that sellers are bending over backwards to sell horses right now, but this seems like one opportunity to skip, pass, decline, and run away fast.

Sounds like quite a sweet deal for this trainer. A free horse to let clients show/get exposure on for the circuit? Awesome. Would not be surprised if the horse got down there, "didn't sell" off the bat, and the trainer has client(s) showing him, while collecting a lease fee from said clients.

This trainer sounds like a slick horse trader trying to take advantage of a poor college kid. You're getting good advice here from lots of people. Take that advice and DON'T learn the hard way through bitter experience.

They come see the horse in his home environment. Period. No matter how nice this person makes it sound, do not send the horse to Florida before you get paid for him.

I like the "smells like a fish, it probably is a fish" comment. :yes:

Personally, I'd call them back and say, "Sorry, not interested. Thanks for your time." And hang up the phone. I wouldn't even listen to a counter offer at this point. The whole, "we take the horse and sell him for you thing" is generally a crock. Not always, of course, not every time, but why on earth would your friend spend five hundred bucks in gas just to take the chance??

If the trainer likes the horse so much they would hippity hoppity up to KY asap with their clients to try the horse out. Believe me

No, No, and No.

How "locally" priced is this horse? The trainer might think she could have one of her kids show him down there (after he doesn't immediately sell, of course) and prove he's a contender in a bigger pond and sell him for three times what your friend's asking for a major profit with almost no investment. If she had one of her clients immediately in mind, she'd come up - it's a cheap flight. Sounds like she really wants that horse in Florida.

No No No NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO No No Nooooooooooooooooooooooo
No no no, no no no ..................

My response is very short, very simple.

Uh......NO. :)

The 'backstory' doesn't matter. There is no way in hell I'd send my horse on that trip. If they are really serious, they know they need to make the trip up to see the horse. (At this point, I'd have lost my patience with them and told them **** off).
She needs to tell them "No. Thank you for your interest." [Buh-BYE] I dont see why that's so hard??
Seriously, why stress the horse, and risk illness and injury during the trip??

ps.. you do know if she opts to send him down, then the 'trainer' will be receiving a huge commission..right?

Nope, sorry, wouldn't do it. I had someone want me to ship a horse an hour away in 98 degree summer heat for trial. I refused to put the horse through that stress. I'll drive all over the place to go look at a horse, so can any buyers interested in one of my horses!!!!!!

DON'T DO IT.

I thought I'd interject two short (hahaha) stories I hope would convince the horse's owner to RUN far FAR AWAY from this 'concept'.

Horse #1
Nice horse, really, and WAS absolutely over priced for most of the time he was for sale by my pal "Sally". At one point "Ned" was to be leased to a Canadian EQ rider, and possible to be purchased by said rider at end of lease (I think) WELL, DUMB @$$ trainer didn't get the contract signed (promised to get it done and didn't let Sally know) and the horse essentially put out his back in the trailer to Canada. OOPS. Sally got stuck with the vet bills and the horse was RTS'd because there was no signed contract. NIIICE. Ned floated around a bit when he was sound again, and was sent on trial to a client of a BNT. Clients "freinds" talked her out of him (HUH?) and the BNT offered to sell Ned for Sally. Yeah, Sally figured out eventually that he just wanted a nice horse to parade around and if he didn't sell him, so what? Ned did sell, eventually, with a different person. Sally barely recouped her purchase price.

Horse #2
Susie, a "medium" NT had a cute horse in from the South for young teen age student to do pre-childrens-childrens eq and hunter. Lease was agreed upon and signed, insurance was taken out, all the t's were crossed, etc. THey have him for a little bit and kid started to fall in love. All's good, right? Not so much. They go to a show. They school. They do an O/F class. They go back for another. Horse leaves ground, lands on other side and friggin COLAPSES. Broke his friggin leg over a jump barely 2'6". Hysterical horse, hysterical kids, trainer sitting on horse's head so he won't get up and shred what is left of leg. Complete nightmare accident that is nobodys fault. Horse is destroyed at the show. NOW, kiddies, do you want to be the one to make or recieve the phone call that your beloved is hopelessly injured? It's bad enough to hear that something bad has happened to a horse you have sold, but the one you still own? GACK I get verclempt just thinking about that one. I felt bad enough that I got to the show just after the 'clean up' and wasn't there to help Susie and her student.

ANd also on the point of distance, if a lease is defaulted on, it's alot harder to "collect" if the horse is several hundred miles away. I had a problem with a lease purchase once and nearly sent people after the horse!! If I didn't have 'people' in FL, it would have been impossible. Got the cash, it wasn't that much relative the balance already paid, but it could have been much, much more trouble. I will NEVER do a long distance lease EVER.

RUN, RUN, RUN away. I smell disaster. Tell them that a plane ticket is cheaper.

My H/J trainer I started with a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away had a nice QH but one of the TB QHs. Excellent jumper, lots of flash, event potential (her opinion and lots of other people's; I know a lot more now than I did then and still think he had real event potential). A seriously nice horse. But she was an H/J lesson barn, and he really wasn't that suited for a lesson horse, being more advanced and larger than many of her kid clientele needed and also being an OTQH who had won and hadn't forgotten that. Horse was for sale but hadn't found his match, needed the right person, and not many eventers in the area looking for a prospect.

Ah ha, one of her kids had a friend, distant relative, visiting who came out to the barn. She saw trainer riding this horse and admired him. When told story, she said oh, her trainer back in this other state had many eventing connections and might know somebody. After that kid went home, other trainer called my trainer and inquired about the horse. Other trainer actually did come up and ride the horse himself and got along well, clearly was an excellent rider. Knew an advanced teen kid interested in eventing who was "perfect" for him, but alas, that kid couldn't come up herself for trial due to school/band/sports/something else. Even if she didn't work out, he knew a few others. He had a much better eventing area. He was sure, if horse was shipped to his place in another state, he could get him sold within a few months tops, and probably to this kid he had in mind a lot faster than that.

Contract drawn up, horse to be shipped to trainer #2 and sold, trainer #2 to bear responsibility for insurance, upkeep, etc., horse to be sold for $x, with trainer #2 getting 5% of that for his time and my trainer getting the rest. She thought all was in black and white and signed. Off went the horse.

Long series of tales about how this person and then that was delayed in trying him, didn't quite work out, another coming, etc. A few months into this, however, the original kid who rode with this trainer came back for another visit to her relative who rode with my trainer. My trainer asked after her horse, which this kid saw regularly. Horse doing fine, had indeed been tried by a few people. My trainer expressed a bit of surprise that the horse had not yet sold, since he was well worth $x. Kid was quite surprised at this and said, oh, I thought he was priced at $XXX.

Trainer had her trailer hooked up the next day and drove to retrieve horse. Trainer #2 had him actually advertised on his bulletin board in the office in his barn for 3 times the agreed-upon-in-the-contract price. Not a bad kickback for trainer #2.

Trainer #1 got her horse back with no more expense than gas, and he had been well cared for in the interim. But she was so mad for a month afterwards that you could see steam rising. No horse for sale ever left her custody and control after that until the deal was completed.

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Originally Posted by MistyBlue

...the seller doesn't bring the sale item to the buyer unless the seller is the ice cream truck driver.

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That's hilarious!

And the very idea of hauling a horse long distance for a potential buyer to try is also hilarious, but maybe not so much because I think that this is a bizzare enough request that they might seriously think that it might work that way.

Your trainer should know better, and if she's entertaining this idea then RUN screaming from her and get a new trainer. She's got something going on with these people if she wants to do this, and I have a feeling that whatever it is is going to be at your expense.

Other the the obscene waste of time and money that it would take to haul the horse down there, it is also not in the best interest of the horse. Hauling long distances is stressful for horses and it puts your horse at risk for colic, dehydration, pneumonia, etc. This is an acceptable risk when it is necessary to get them from A to B, but not so that a maybe buyer can take him on spin around the ring, decide its a no sale, and turn the horse around for another long haul.

Getting a resounding NO here on COTH should be enough to make anyone think twice about doing something.

But really, this is how the sharks operate. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It's a win-win for the trainer, and your friend is almost guaranteed to lose. What's going to happen is the trainer is going to tell your friend the horse isn't quite a perfect match for said teenager, but she's got another client coming next week who will be perfect! Then something happens and that client has to cancel, but someone else is really interested too! And the cycle perpetuates... In the end, trainer gets a free horse for awhile, and if trainer finally sells the horse it will be for 5 times more than the KY asking amount (which the trainer will "forget" to mention to the original seller and happily keep all that excess profit). :rolleyes:

If you have any doubts on just how unscrupulous the horse world is, read this:
http://badbusinessalert.com/cgi-bin/...tem=1169953720

I was selling a horse a couple of years ago, and got a call from a trainer a few towns away. She "had a client who sounded perfect" but trainer "didn't have time to come look at him." Wanted me to ship the horse to her barn so she could see him and the "perfect client" could try him, and in the event it didn't work out, she had several other possible buyers in mind. Mind you, this would have been only about an hour away. Guess how long it took me to say "NO THANKS." It just sounded like a load of BS to me. Kind of like this case.

Just want to point out that sometimes things of this mature do really work out (cause Im not ready for the world to end. Next year is going to be a great one for me!)

Our barn has 1 from TX, 1 from LA, and several locals in to sell. I am nowhere near either o these states. Now maybe the rep of this trainer is impecable and these hosres are from people that know him. I had never heard of him before, but I digress. IF, and I stress IF cause I know the trainer is extrememly honest, something untoward was to go on it woudl be hard for the owners of these horses to know about it or get them back.

Maybe there were deposits/ernest $$ or something e xchanged, idk. But it does happen and it does work. Under the right circumstances.

Yeah we know trainers around here who promise $x for this horse and sell for $y, and charge a commission. Maybe those commandments should go up in Walmart too!

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Originally Posted by CoolMeadows

How "locally" priced is this horse? The trainer might think she could have one of her kids show him down there (after he doesn't immediately sell, of course) and prove he's a contender in a bigger pond and sell him for three times what your friend's asking for a major profit with almost no investment. If she had one of her clients immediately in mind, she'd come up - it's a cheap flight. Sounds like she really wants that horse in Florida.

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Exactly! The trainer is looking to make money off this horse, whether or not the intended client buys it.

I'm POUNDING on the BS button over here!!! DON'T do it!!!

After reading the updates, OP, I am more convinced than ever that you two are being taken for a ride. This trainer is setting you up to have the horse for the winter, sell it at a huge price for which you will see next to nothing, considering the board and fees the trainer will then deduct from your measly share.

I can't believe you haven't caught on to any of this.

If you and or the owner of this horse talk yourselves into sending the horse on with this trainer, will we need to be subjected to next springs tale of woe?

Please. Please be smart, and don't give this yahoo the time of day.