Loss of use freeze marks

[leginkrad]

Does any body know why the loss of use freeze marks that insurance companies insist are used after a claim are not very informative ie the L in a circle means the same if a horse has had a total loss of use or a partial loss of use.This is not very helpful when the horse has been sold on several times and when the insurance company is asked they refuse to divulge any information claiming it would breach the data protection act to divulge the medical history of a horse they do even insure.

 

[sami4971]

It isn't very helpful at all! We bought a cleveland bay x from a sale in emaciated state and not only did he come with the wrong passport so we had to trace his proper one, we couldn't find anything out about his LOU. We got a vet to check him over once we had him back to health and he was fine for riding, but had a slight heart murmur. The LOU mark had been covered with a numnah in the sale ring but he was only £250 so we took the risk because it was obvious where his future lie otherwise. We had to get trading standards involved because the passport companies were being so awkward. The worst thing was ringing farmkey to see if he was stolen because his freezemark didn't match his passport, they wouldn't tell us who passported him and couldn't understand why we would want to find his real owners! Trading Standards fond out he was really passported with Farmkey themselves.

The worst thing was selling him to a home that seemed perfect then reading a post on here saying how he needed "TLC" and how we hadn't given much information on him when we had spent MONTHS getting a 17.2hh heavy horse from emaciated state to what the vet said was ideal and tracing his passport, old owners etc. Some people don't seem to 'get' that a horse in that state doesn't put weight on over night.

Our vet told us it wasn't even worth trying to find out what his LOU was for as you could spend thousands and still not find out.