Has this happened to you? Forever home & re-sold?

A friend and I swopped ponies, I bought her 14.2 and lent her my 11.2 for two years. I can honestly say that neither of the animals cared one bit who was providing their grass and accomodation. My friend and I live in different part of the country and they had different riders and routines but settled straight away.
You only try and hope to find the right home for your horse and be realistic in your expectations.
 
i sold a coloured cob a few years ago that i bought from a not so nice dealer, he was wild and had awful feet, granted i bought him to sell on, i had him for 6 months, got him started under saddle, and advertised him. had a few unsuitable viewers, but a lovely lady called and said she wanted him as a mother daughter share to keep for the forseeable future. they seemed lovely people so took an offer on him and off he went. i felt happy that he was going to be loved. only to see him advertised on horsemart the next day for over £1000 more than she paid me for him. very much annoyed me, but **** happens i guess!
 
I bought my horse from one of the worst dealers possible. He was doped when i saw him and sold as a 10 year old. He arrived at the stables and then the fun started. To cut a long story short Chester was at least 15 and now without the dope in his system he proved to be quite a handfull. Im not the most experienced of riders so i spent most of the first 6 months on the floor hoping he had got home ok. Gradually Chester began to trust us and i flatter myslef that he now likes us. A move to a quieter yard further into the countryside completely settled him and he has turned out to be a fantastic happy hack. He has copd and had obviously been a hunter so i assume his working life was over. On one hand he has ended up after going through the auctions by chance in a loving home...but on the other hand it seems a shame that having been kept as a working horse for a fair chunk of time his owners left him to take his chances at an auction. Whatever had happened to him before we got him he was extremely unsettled and neglected. i hope to keep him for the rest of his natural life but if this is not to be i think i would rather pts than abandon him to an unknown fate with strangers.
 
I have a friend who sold her broodmare on as such, she had an injury so wasn't suitable for riding. Within a week she'd had a phone call from someone who had bought her as a competition dressage horse - the buyer turned out to be a dealer and had taken her straight to sale, filled her with bute and resold her. The new owner was wanting to know what level she was at!

I have never sold a horse, I've had 2 pts but I'd like to think mine will be with me until the end of their days. That said, you just don't know what's round the corner, but at least I'd try and loan if possible until I could have them back.
 
Thank you so much everyone for your replies - very helpful :)

This assignment came about from a discussion about where horses sit in our eyes with regards to ownership and buying/selling. We concluded that animals and objects we own sit in a scale of usefulness vs emotion; our beloved pet cats & dogs are pets with no job, horses are pets with a job and then you have commodities/objects such as cars and houses which have a job but we are not emotionally attached.

When it comes to selling a healthy and sound horse the range of options are quite clear-cut and depend on where you view the animal in the chain (pet-job-object). So you can either keep the horse forever yourself (pet). Sell privately doing your best to find a good home (job) or sell to a dealer and let them decide the animal's future (object).
When it comes to selling a horse that is not 100% sound or healthy, either due to injury, illness or age. The same three options exist, but the job becomes harder. To keep yourself is expensive/time-consuming and not necessarily rewarding. To find a private home needs the assurance that the horse will be cared for appropriately and not sold on minus the details about the horse’s history. To sell to a dealer is merely directly passing the problem on (and to some extent hiding it). And then there is the 4th option of PTS to stop the chain of ownership…

From looking at horses for sale on the internet there seems an increasing number of semi-retired horses looking for hacking/light work/companion homes. These people are obviously trying to follow the 'finding a good private home' option - but this I feel, is the area where the horror stories come from and why people on this forum often advise people to PTS rather than risk a horse being sold on as something it is not. Unfortunately there are some people out there who view the horses as objects that money can be made from. (From your replies and pm’s I now have examples of this occurring in Wales, Essex, Norfolk and Kent). However, on the positive side, from my posts it also appears there are people out there who are compassionate and can offer a loving, forever home and thank you - I will also be including these examples :)

The one area I didn't include above is that of loaning (because someone else is writing about that!). I will add though, that this is obviously an attempt by owners to regain some control of their animal but does somewhat ‘grey’ the lines of pet/job/object. Whilst it should appear to be a safer option than relinquishing ownership, it appears to also be flouted by a certain number of people with a blatant disregard for the legal contract and ignorance of the fact that selling a horse on without owning it is a criminal act.

Overall, I wonder if there should be stronger laws governing the sale of horses? Whilst we do now have passports, microchips and freezemarks, these things don’t give us access to a horse’s medical history unless we can get in contact with a previous owner and they are willing to reveal details. And regardless of where we sit in the pet/job/object view on a horse – we need correct information on a horse’s history so we can appropriately care for it whether it is a glorified lawnmower, weekend plod or serious competition horse.....
 
I believe vet history should be legally available to purchasers and also that any previous vettings should be stamped into the passport with when they were done and by whom. A horse I saw at a well 'known' dealer failed the vet and the seller didnt blink an eyelid. I knew she would still have it for sale and not disclose the failed vetting which he failed on ataxia.

Since I have to electronically tag my sheep (!) and horses are now microchipped I also think that passports should have barcode which matches the chip but with more info. Any replacement passport would have a code on the barcode denoting how many passports had been issued for this horse. The code would also contain DoB of the horse.
 
We also need a system similar to France as the passport is not proof of ownership, but it would be more difficult here as breed societies refused to allow DEFRA to have one PIO:

In France, the passport is proof that the horse is who he is - identity and breeding, and the microchip is part of proving the identity, not just of the horse but linking it with the owner too.

The proof of ownership is the ''carte d'immatriculation'' which will be provided to you by the Haras Nationaux when you register the horse. The passport must always stay with the horse because the horse isn't necessarily always with the owner - it could be away at stud, at livery or away at competition.

The owner keeps the carte until the horse either dies or is sold on when the Haras must be informed either on line or by filling in the appropriate section on the carte and posting back within a certain number of days for them to update the register - by law.
 
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