I went to my first horse auction this weekend. I’ve always
said that I would never, ever go to one. And I probably shouldn’t have. About 5
minutes into walking into the sale barn, I was almost in tears. I got there as
they were selling loose horses. $20, $35, $5, $15, Give-away. My bleeding heart
almost couldn’t take it. Horses with burrs in their manes and tails, horse with
their tails cut off, it was heart breaking. I wanted to take them all home with
me. But we weren’t really looking to buy, hubby was there networking.
After all the loose horses were sold, in came the saddle
horses. Tiny ponies with Amish kids on their backs and great big smiles were
lead in and they went for a pretty good price. A beautiful team of great big almost
identical paint horses were ridden in. They were bought as a driving team, but
ended up going to separate homes. It was when buddies got split up, that I had
the hardest time with. They probably spent their entire lives together, and now
they were going to separate places and would never see each other again.
Registerd AQHA yearlings with show points went for really cheap. Some of the
sellers didn’t get what they wanted for their horses, so they kept them. But
most of the horses were going cheap, The most expensive horse of the night was
a grade ranch horse that went for $2500. If you listed it on one of the local
online classified ads for double, you’d probably get it. Beautiful horses kept
going through and hubby kept nudging me asking me if I wanted any of them. I
said no. That was until the end of the night.
Yes, we bought a horse. At an auction, something I swore I’d
never do. He was sold as a grade quarter horse, but he is BIG and in my opinion
probably an appendix quarter horse since he looks a little bit like he's got some TB in there. I suck at horse breeds though so he could just be a quarter horse! I’d be lying if I said it has been peaches
and rainbows since we brought him home. When we first brought him to the pasture
and turned him loose, we couldn’t catch him again. Awesome. But hubby did some
research and then worked on catching the hard to catch horse. It took about 45
minutes but he caught him again. He is a very, very sweet horse. And he leads
like a champ. The boy cover A LOT of ground when he moves. And he has a beautiful canter out in the pasture. But he’s pretty amped up because he’s in a new place. And as we
figured out, after the deal was done of course, that we bought him from a horse
trader so who knows how many homes this guy has had. We know we are the 3rd
home in as many weeks. Buying a horse at an auction is super sketch. Did I make
the right decision in buying a horse there? Probably not. Is this going to be a
nightmare? More than likely. Am I got to regret this decision every single day
for the rest of my life? Probably. Maybe I should start a new blog about him. Oh and we decided to name him Pistol. If it
was entirely my decision, it would be Winston, or Charles, or some other human
name. But Pistol was something I just came up with and the only one hubby liked
of all my awesome names.
#859 |
"You don't even KNOW how much I plan to live up to my new name!" |
"nomnomnom" |
So that is the story of our new horse. I may have a bit of buyer’s
remorse kicking in. But he is a very, very sweet horse. He has had a rough
couple of weeks, and I want to give him some time to adjust before really
trying to figure him out. He seems so distant and detached probably because he
thinks he is leaving here in a week. Lets hope everything works out for him and
us.
OH, and the best part of this horse....We were looking for something smaller and a different color than our current horses...Not only is this one red, but he TOWERS over the other two! I don't even really LIKE red horses...but red horses sure like me.
OH, and the best part of this horse....We were looking for something smaller and a different color than our current horses...Not only is this one red, but he TOWERS over the other two! I don't even really LIKE red horses...but red horses sure like me.