Less than a week after I used all my diplomatic powers to tell the poor owner of the good-for-nothing-trotter that she should get rid of it, she did. Result. The world is a safer place and I am rather pleased with myself. Well technically not I suppose as the damned thing is still alive, but I am sure the safety of horse hugging maniacs who dedicate their lives to retraining trotters don’t count as much as the safety of slightly overweight young girls who have been fooled into buying a pet that could potentially kill them and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in their way .
I have encountered quite a few clients with a varying degree of unsuitable horses. And many times I have in disbelief tried to figure out just why they choose to spend so much time and money on something that will never be even remotely decent, but I have to say this is the first time I have just said: Get rid of it!
Because in most cases with some time, patience and hard work it is possible to improve things quite drastically. What I have also learned is that people want different things from their horses. A horse that to me is a waste of space could be ideal for someone else and I always try to keep this in mind when assessing horse/rider combinations. Unfortunately due to the poor breeding program in this country there is a desperate lack of good quality normal hacks for bad riders. Come to think of it there is also a desperate amount of bad riders. So these people tend to end up buying very cheap horses straight off the racetracks. This could be a complete waste of money in the case of ex-trotters or just damn right dangerous when it’s a tree-year old thoroughbred ending up in inexperienced hands.
One former client of mine went for the racing fit thoroughbred, and it literally ended with death and destruction. For all I know she could have been a decent rider in her youth, but having now turned into an overweight single mother approaching forty with serious mental issues and a tendency to drink alcohol first thing in the morning, her general fitness was not great and her riding, well it was even worse.
She purchased the horse after her shrink had convinced her to take up a hobby following the decision that her son would now live mainly with the father. Now I don’t know the details of it, but I have understood that in general it is not a good sign when the mother looses custody. My lessons with her consisted mainly of us chatting and me trying to find some exercises for her and the horse to do that didn’t scare me to death. It can be quite terrifying to watch when you know that the situation has potential to get seriously out of control. But in general it went really well, we had some progress from week to week, they stayed in the school, she stayed on and was really enjoying it. But then the mare, although highly strung, was surprisingly easy to train as long as it was kept busy. They seemed to bond somehow, but with them both being psychiatric cases it was probably a good match.
But then after about six months she stopped having lessons altogether, in fact I suspect she struggled to even get out of bed for her morning drink, and the horse was just hacked occasionally by some of the girls at the yard. Then one night it went terribly wrong. So say the mare saw another horse in the distance, must have thought she was back on the racetrack or something because she bolted blindly down a main road. After narrowly escaping a car the girl on top decided her best option was to throw herself off into a ditch, which was good thing really as the horse ended its days going through the front of the number 32 bus a few kilometres down the road. Apart from the bus driver getting the shock of his life when half a ton of horseflesh hit his windscreen, no one was injured, which was just plain luck really.
So the other piece of advice I gave the poor girl with the trotter last week was to be very honest about the attributes of the animal she was trying to get rid off. Normally I would not recommend a sales add that included the words dangerous, evil and totally unpredictable, but in this case it was better to cover one’s back completely to avoid any responsibility in the event of future incidents. So now Trotting Bitch from Hell has been re-homed with someone who specialises in retraining trotters, whatever that means. Good luck to them and happy recovery I say.
I have also asked her to please contact me before buying a new horse. She might not realise this herself, but she needs a completely bombproof weight carrying munter. It is all about finding the right kind of wrong. I am still working on how to put this across to her though.
No comments:
Post a Comment