A moment

Over the past few days, I have spend a considerable amount of time browsing through horse blogs. I've found several that really offer great advice and articles such as http://shameinthehorseshowring.blogspot.com/ and http://www.regardinghorses.com/ . However, I've stumbled upon a couple that are quite humorous. I love how high school kids think they know enough about horses to criticise conformation, riding abilities, selling abilities, and anything else involving horses on their blogs....

Aside from that, I'm going to try to NOT be one of those blogs that constantly criticise everything going on in the horse industry but I can assure you there will be those moments!

And for my first moment...

I sold a western saddle to this guy back in July or August of this year. He seemed like an honest man, quite young (30s prob.) who had a few horses...I could tell he was new to the idea and probably did not know what to look for when buying a saddle. When he arrived at my barn, I showed him the saddle and he nodded yes, he would like to buy it. I began taking off my accessories which, I admit, I should have already done. I had a fairly big set of saddle bags attached to the back, an old breastcollar that I had won barrel racing when I was younger, and a neoprene girth. I know some people include accessories with their saddles but I had advertised this saddle as is and for 100 bucks, so he wasn't getting anything extra! I told him that he would need a saddle pad and a girth to use the saddle. He gave me a confused look and I explained what the girth was for. He also asked me to suggest a bit so I grabbed a simple tom thumb and a d-ring which were hanging near by and explained what these bits were used for and what he should probably look for in a mild bit. He paid me and left. The next day as I'm leaving work, he calls to say he "assumed" the saddle bags came with the saddle (note: I never mentioned anything about saddle bags in the ad nor were they in a picture, etc) I told him that if he really wanted them that bad, I would sell them to him extra for 5 bucks. He came by later and bought them. Now, this incident really didn't bother me.....the guy obviously didn't really know what he was buying.....BUT, a few months later, I started seeing my old saddle appear in several ads on craigslist, on horses listed for sale. At first, I didn't think much of it but as I continued to see more and more horses listed, I began to realize what was going on. Turns out, my clueless saddle-buying friend, who didn't know what a girth was for, was now buying and selling horses for a living. His ads would say things like bomb proof, excellent bloodlines, papered, show horse, child's horse, etc. He would even have his children riding ponies barefoot and in shorts. Every time I read one I would cringe! Surely someone who had no clue what a girth was could not obtain enough knowledge within a few short months to proclaim a horse to be bomb proof or child proof, or a show horse for that matter!! He even went as far as putting little sparkly, myspace looking glitter text, on his horse ads. BARF! So many times I've wanted to call him and say You have NO right to be trading horses like this...you no nothing about them. You shouldn't have even bought a horse much less become a horse trader! Idiot! Unfortunately, he has not posted in several weeks but I will show you a post by him as soon as I find another one!

Ok I'm sure your tired of me venting so I'll stop.........but he sucks!