Has anyone ever given away a horse?

I paid £10 as a nominal fee for a 7 yr old unbroken NF that was a hamaphrodite (sp?) from an over stocked stud.

He was my horse of a lifetime.
 
My friends OH paid £1 for a horse which the owners didnt want, but he was a rearer and had to give him back because he was dangerous :/
and her daughter was given a little 12.2hh pony from a family member (outgrown) shes had him for years now and i still ride him every now and then :)
 
I've been given a few in the past few years. I have normally paid £1 for them to get a receipt of sale. None have been very easy, but all have been good fun, I've still got two of them, one 14.2hh who I had on loan for years and then due to his behaviour when he failed to sell I was given him (he will never be sold). And recently I got given a 15.2hh coloured dutch warmblood mare due to her owners pregnancy, I'm hoping to team chase and event her but she's very unfit at the moment. I've been given a few small ponies in the past, including one trotter x shetland youngster which was dumped on me by a traveller which was completely wild and untouchable and in a 10 acre field. In the end after still not being able to get near him for a couple of weeks I called the ILPH and we rounded him up and them I signed him over to them (they called him Bambi and thankfully he's now doing very well).
 
My first horse was free, although I insisted that I needed to pay at least £1, and I gave away my section A to a friend for the same amount.

How did it work out.... well I had 5 wonderful years with my first horse before he was PTS, and my friend still has the pony and it is going well.
 
Iv been given 3 horses as gifts due to their naughty behaviour and love them dearly. Each one has a receipt off sale so that they are mine. I would give a horse away if I knew it was the right home but make sure people don't get confused as to weather you mean loan or gift horse.
 
I have one to give away with me now. Permanent free loan as long as he is kept the way I specify, no shoes, no grass. I paid £1 for him to ensure that he was mine to do what I thought was right and he is sound and very happy and being placed in dressage competitions. Anyone looking for a dressage horse (he piaffes, pirouettes and half passes) PM me.

I gave away a horse with spavin who needed to live on flat ground, but we only have steep hills. I wrote a letter passing ownership to the new person, no money exchanged hands. He's been with her 3 years and she loves him to death.

I have been offered two others, but they were too small for me. I passed one on to each of two friends, who each cured their navicular with a barefoot rehab and both horses now hunt.

If I'm giving away I wouldn't need money to change hands, but if I'm receiving I would always pay £1 and get a receipt so the owner can't suddenly change their minds and insist it was only a loan and take it back.
 
My friend gave me her horse, I had just had to have my older pony put down and was looking to buy another. Her mare had been retired to stud and the week after my pony was PTS they discovered she had lost the foal and was unlikley to be able to carry another foal. She was 18, a total fruitloop to ride and a hideous weaver. She would have been a nightmare to sell and my friend would have worried about her starting to change hands and being treated badly. She offered her to me for free on the understanding that if I couldn't keep her for any reason I would return her. That was 6 years ago and she's still in ridden work and still a total fruitloop! Though she is getting better :) we started in an American gag and now she's in a myler comfort snaffle!
 
I am about to give my second horse away.

My first giveaway was my mare about 14 years ago. She was a brood mare for 7 years after recovering rom a fractured pedal bone and when she came back sound enough for pootling I gave her to a friend who loved her to pieces and still has her now. I sold her to her for a £1.

My old boy Gulliver is 19 and has been a Companion for 2 years with a lovely girl. He now appears to be pootling sound so she has my tack for the odd hack and as I type I am supposed to be writing up a receipt for a pound so he can stay with her forever.

Now I have 2 happy horse memories a broken bank account and a cupboard full of stuff I cant part with but am very content.

It begs the question how many moth eaten pieces of gamgee do I really need!!
 
Several years ago i was given a horse. He was originally on my yard on loan to a young girl. He had had a nasty injury in the field to a fetlock but had come sound. This was a young horse, only 6 years old. Not long after she started riding him he went lame again. Loanee asked owners to take him back and they agreed but said they would PTS. Loanee was devastated so me being a soft touch thought I'd give him a chance and said I would have the horse if they would sell him cheaply enough. Owners were brilliant and said they would give him to me :) They wrote me a letter explaining that he was gifted to me and handing over his passport etc. I had no problems at all from the old owners. Sadly, after a year turned away, he came sound but broke down again shortly after so he was PTS anyway :( RIP Flash.
 
My main issue with this is how do you make sure your horse goes to the right person and keep traceability of them? Is it a good idea to give only to friends?
 
A friend of mine picked up a youngster for free (well, £40 for fuel costs) as the owner was going to live abroad and needed to get rid of his horses asap! xx
 
I was very lucky as the first lady was an old friend and still is and I still see my old mare even though it means sometimes I nearly run into the back of a lorry (only joking) as she lives in a field I drive past regularly.

My second giveaway owner has become a very good friend since she took on the loan so I guess I am saying yes. I couldnt have given Gully to just anyone I had to know that was happening to him was right for him and that he would be well looked after.
 
Angua2 said:
My first horse was free, although I insisted that I needed to pay at least £1, and I gave away my section A to a friend for the same amount.

How did it work out.... well I had 5 wonderful years with my first horse before he was PTS, and my friend still has the pony and it is going well.
Click to expand...

yup, SWA is still a little twit & adored by my kids & me, getting the hang of this driving lark too.
 
i got my lad for £1, his owner couldnt handle him and he was deemed dangerous. so we took him, he tried it on when we got home told him who was boss and i have the most fantastic horse you could ever ask for he is better than the horse i paid £1500 for. his previous owner advertise him in the local feed shop we went saw him said we would have him and that was that. she came and saw him once about a month after and that was it she changed her number and disappeared off the face of the planet.

suits me she doesn't realise she gave away a horse that was probably worth about 5k
 
If you are giving away or selling cheap to anyone you don't know and trust absolutely, write a tight contract. My first giveaway was actually sold for £500 to someone who said and did all the right things. She travelled for over three hours to come and see him. She even sent me a vase of flowers on the day he was transported to her place. And then she starved him. I had a contract that let me go and fetch him back, so I did.
 
Kitsune said:
My main issue with this is how do you make sure your horse goes to the right person and keep traceability of them? Is it a good idea to give only to friends?
Click to expand...

Then you loan them. You either give them away and all rights to their future care - or you loan them with the risk that they could be dumped back on you at any time.
 
I have a pony we bought for £1. The lady who owned the livery yard contacted me as he was a little cheeky then threw a spavin so they felt he was not saleable! His owner couldnt afford full llivery for him and her new horse so was happy to let him go for a token, I signed a contract and paid £1. He is still a little cheeky but the most awesome Hunter, have never had a problem with his spavin in 3 years.
 
dieseldog said:
Then you loan them. You either give them away and all rights to their future care - or you loan them with the risk that they could be dumped back on you at any time.
Click to expand...

This.

While people do have contracts re returns etc. if title on the horse has been passed on - note of sale, passport ownership, that sort of thing - it is very difficult to defend them legally if someone want's to stick on a point. The fact is, once someone owns something, they have right to do with it what they want and you don't have the legal right to command them to behave in a certain way. If it comes down to a humane treatment issue you could possibly just go and get the horse and no one would complain, but if the DID complain it would be sticky legal ground.

I've had two given to me and two I've given away. In both the cases regarding horses I owned, the horses were loaned first then I made the decision due to circumstances that the horses would be better off owned by the other parties. In both cases they were good friends, people I respected, and had already had the horses successfully for some time. They maybe didn't do things exactly as I would have wished in every instant but I recognised (eventually ;) ) that I am not the only person on the planet who can look after a horse properly and "different" does not equal "wrong". In both cases they horses would have been marketable but I made what I think was the right decision for the horse. In one case the signing over was because the other person moved and wanted to take the horse, in the other I moved and was no longer able to be immediately available should the horse need its legal owner for some reason. To all intents and purposes though, they had "owned" the horses in all but the most technical sense, for literally years.

The two given to me came through my work with "problem" horses and while both would have been very marketable the owners (both the horses' breeders) felt the horse would be best off with me. In one case I sold the horse on (with the previous owner's blessing as that had always sort have been the plan) and in the second case we still have him. :)

If you give the horse away you have effectively sold it and all the same rules apply. If you want to continue to control what happens to the horse, then you have to keep legal title to it and recognise that you still have a practical obligation to the horse.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top