Loan home rant

duggan

duggan

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I loaned a horse to a yard a couple of hours away after someone put an ad on requesting a first type horse. So off he goes, lovely bloke, great reports, really happy. All fine for almost a year, then gets call saying horse won't travel forwards anymore, keeps falling over. Travelled ok for over 6 months.... and wasn't loaned as a competition horse just a hack and fun one. This is an ex racer who ran 120 odd times, and mostly travelled about in a little 3.5t box, facing forwards. If fact it took him a while to adjust to herringbone when we bought him a few years ago.
Anyway, horse came back, and i'm pleased he has.
Same person advertised for someone else who needed a first type horse, up to a bit of weight, so I had another semi retired lad, and he went to the same yard. All ok, pleasing reports, horse and loaner happy. Had a text late last night from a 3rd party saying this horse was coming home as loaner is behind on the rent.

Now i'm not complaining that both horses are coming here, they are both perfectly well behaved and will give someone an enormous amount of fun. My rant is those people who treat a loan horse as a disposable commodity. Both horses seemed well loved, and we had talked about 'gifting' them to the loaners so they could call them their own, I know that is a big difference to a lot of people. Am just so glad we didn't as lord knows where they would have ended up. And if the horses had been theirs, would they have offloaded them as quickly? First loaner has another one already, such devotion. He admits the travelling could have been ironed out but person owning the box wouldn't allow it, and encouraged him to get rid of this horse. Horse has been out several times already, and travelled without any issues. Perhaps something happened during the first 6 months he was loaned out..... horses don't usually kick off without a reason.
Oh well, at least with the 2nd one back here I can turn my back on the whole bloody yard and their temporary loaners lol.
 
After too many bad experiences I am very dubious about loaning again.
Our mare who had always been a good traveller came home unable to stand in a forward facing trailer. I don't know if something happened to her, they wouldn't say.
At least you have yours home and safe but I agree, loan horses are definitley a disposable commodity, grrrrrrr.
 
I don't think it's just loaners who get 'into horses' as a passing fad, there are plenty of sad cases standing around in fields and stables unattended and unloved. At least on the plus side, your two are coming home healthy, there have been some horror stories on here.

In general I think too many people buy or loan horses with far too little thought of what is really involved in their care and upkeep. They seem to view matters only from a financial point of view, without considering the many other factors involved, like weather, time, holidays (or lack of) etc.

And breath and count 2, 3, 4.....
 
I am so sorry you have had bad experiences ... but there are some good ones of us about i have been gifted my loan horse my old boy and he is treated as my own he is 24 now and when fully retired i will not send him back he will see out his days in luxury with me, he has given me so much enjoyment and confidence and i will repay him back xx
 
We're not all bad! My daughter has been lent a 30 year old, laminitic, broken winded, foul tempered mare with mild sweet itch. They have clicked and she totally adores her so we have asked her owner (who hasn't been up to see her in years) if we can buy her via the YO. We are keeping our fingers crossed. We've gotton very attached to this little mare and want to make sure she has a happy retirement and a dignified end. As some one else pointed out, there are plenty of bad owners out there too.
 
Dizzykizzy said:
After too many bad experiences I am very dubious about loaning again.
Our mare who had always been a good traveller came home unable to stand in a forward facing trailer. I don't know if something happened to her, they wouldn't say.
At least you have yours home and safe but I agree, loan horses are definitley a disposable commodity, grrrrrrr.
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I loaned before I bought my horse and have returned 2 loan horses. I looked after them as if they were my own and certainly didn't view them as a disposable commodity. One of the horses had a nasty stop and was ruining my confidence jumping. Had I owned her I would have sold her as she wasn't right for me. However as I didn't own her my only other option was to return her to her owner (with proper notice of course). I think that was a perfectly reasonable course of action.

If you don't want to take the chance of the horse coming back you need to sell rather than loan.
 
amymay said:
But it is. That's why people loan.......:o
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Not necessarily! I have just taken a horse on loan. I own another horse, who is away on loan herself, to one of my closest friends. My friend gave the mare a job and a customised accomodation that I couldn't as I'm on a livery yard, and cannot afford to buy my own place. Nor can I afford to buy another horse, but I can certainly afford the upkeep of a horse on a regular basis. Having given up horses for ten years, and now back to it for the last five....I don't really want to spend the next few years saving up the purchase price on a horse. So I found a horse that needed a loan home and I'm happy to keep him indefinately. I don't anticipate sending him back when the time comes to retire him (he's only 11, and I'm 39, so this could be my last horse - who knows...). I don't anticipate having to send him back at all. But if it comes down to it, and I just couldn't afford to keep him (I'm self employed and well so, but nothing is forever in this economy!) then at least I will have the option to send him back if I had to. I would love to own this horse though, but he is never for sale.
 
i loaned out a horse to a friend a few years back.

He had been riding him, and i was going away for work.

Anyways, i came back for a visit, and had bought pony a saddle, so went over to check on him, found him fully clipped - no rug out in the snow, skinny.
and had a massive gash on his leg where him and another had been shut in the stable together!!! (12x12)

WHATT!!!!!!!!

I would never loan again. But i do have a lovely sharer who helps out with teddi, for a walk round the block every now and then
 
Actually, the loaned ones are the lucky ones surely - at least they can be rescued and taken back by their owners, rather than the ones whose owners just dump them in a field somewhere, unattended and uncared for.
 
fatpiggy said:
Actually, the loaned ones are the lucky ones surely - at least they can be rescued and taken back by their owners, rather than the ones whose owners just dump them in a field somewhere, unattended and uncared for.
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That's a good point. We often see posts on here about 'I sold my horse and now it's been sold again and I don't know where it is and I'm worried'. At least, if you check on the horse enough, you can prevent any serious mistreatment.

I am getting worried since Zoomy is going on loan when I go to uni :( All these horror stories upset me!

I do agree with AmyMay to a certain extent.....I mean if you wanted a horse for keeps, you would buy one. Zoom will come back to me when I finish uni, I can see the post now - Help! Mean owner is taking my beloved horsie back after four years.
 
If I loaned a horse, I would treat it as my own:)

I think loaning can be a good option for first time owners as at least if it does go wrong, you have the option of returning the horse, rather than ending up having to sell it to an uncertain future. When eventually I come to look for a horse I think I will loan although probably from a charity rather than privately - I have seen several lovely looking horses that I think would have suited me just fine recently, damn being poverty-stricken!

I don't think it's at all fair to tar all loaners with the same brush:mad:
 
Certainly not all loaners are bad - I have loaned my pony out and also had a pony on loan. I deeply regret returning the pony I had on loan though. I think I knew more about him in the 6 mths I had him than the owner knew in the years she'd owned him. After 6 mths loan she asked if we wanted to buy him but her asking price was v expensive at the time, although had we known how good he was we'd have bought him!

As it was the loan agreement ended, she was moving a bit further down south so arranged for him to be picked up - by a transporter - and travelled the 5 hrs to her! Now, had she known more about that pony (stressy being on his own, stressy traveller) she'd never had done this. I was distraught at the time having to leave him on this yard - she arranged for transporter to pick him up from, a strange place. I can't still hear him and see him how stressed he was when we left him there - he wouldn't eat he got in such a state.

I provided travelling boots etc for him as she hadn't thought about anything lie that (I never got them back!)

However, he was going back to his owner, that was the agreement in the loan. BUT, she called us after he'd arrived at hers ranting down the phone how emaciated and ill he was! Now, this pony dropped weight if travelled for 1 hr or was popped in a stable or was away from his friends (a dedicated, caring owner would have known that) so he was bound to have got in a state having been left in a strange stable yard and transported the following day.

Still, she blamed us even though during the loan she had been to see and ride him. He'd put on loads of weight as he was sickly when I got him. She caused so much upset blaming me and my mother, she even tried to get her vet to get a case against us for neglecting him!!!

So no doubt we'll have been noted as some of the 'bad loaners' when in fact we cared for that pony more than she ever had. I dread to think how his life went and how he ended up - with any luck she loaned him to some other decent people. I still to this day wish we'd bought him!

Not sure where i was going with that but just to say not all loaners treat horses as something they can just get rid of when they can't be bothered anymore and not all horror stories about loaners will necessarily be true either!
 
I have two horses on loan at the moment - and would treat neither as a disposable commodity. But one of the reasons I am loaning is to give myself more flexibility to make decisions about having a horse that suits what I want to do.

That may sound heartless - but both the horses I have on loan have lovely lives and I look after them as if they are mine. I have spend hours and hours on lessons / schooling turning my loan pony from a giraffe looking jumping pony into a beautifully schooled boy who now wins regualrly in the show ring / at dressage (he'd never done either before I bought him) I am now considering how much further we can go together, and if now is the time for me to think about him going home.

My other horse is just 4 - and his owner has backed him beautifully and he has all the basics, but is very very green so I will be teaching him everything. I hope at the end of it I will have the opportunity to keep him as I am totally in love with him already, but I also appreciate he is not my horse and she may want him back once I've done all the hard work - but thats the risk I have to take as a loaner. In the same way, if a year down the line I find I cannot progress the way I want to or our partnership isn't working, I can give him back.

As well as these two, I have my own semi retired 16yr old TB who has a lovely part loaner who rides him and gives him lots of attention, but who is my responsibility both financially and emotionally for the rest of his life - so thats where my priorities have to be. (The life of luxury he leads means that could well be for the next 10 years at least!!) If his part loaner couldn't afford him / didn't want to loan him anymore, I would have to give up one of my loan horses anyway. Its one of the reasons I decided to full loan once he had semi retired as I just can't afford a whole herd of retired horses in the future!!
 
I had Ella on loan for a year. I loved that little mare to bits, spoiled her rotten, and tried my very best to get her sound again when she went horribly lame with arthritis in both knees. Even though she was field sound, I couldnt get her sound to be ridden again, though, so had to end the loan, and her owner decided to have her PTS instead of risking her going to an unsuitable companion home. Ella had a lovely last year of life, though. She certainly wasnt stuck in a field and abandoned.
 
Some interesting stories, and I know there are lots of good loans going on out there. I'm certainly pleased these two horses are both still mine so they can come back, but just feel that if they were 'owned' by these people they wouldn't have pushed them away so quickly. It seems that loaners in general will move onto the next one rather than working through an issue. Neither of mine are coming back due to problems or issues, other than becoming unhappy in front facing travelling. and as he was fine for the first 6 months I can't really explain why he's struggling.
Hopefully I can find someone who needs a horse of their type, where they can continue to be useful! But they will not be sold, i'd give them the credit they deserve and they would be pts here rather than being shuffled about.
 
works both ways though as the loaner can also ask for the horse to be returned. TBF thats why I was never up for long term loaning (we loaned a friends gelding for a year but she always knew that was till we found our own) you can put a hell of a lot of work in for it just to go back.

so yes, while with me a loan horse would be treated as my own. But if I didnt think it was working or wasnt happy I would discuss sending it back to owner.
 
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