Selling a horse you’ve not had long

[Jellymoon]

Oh, and incidentally, the new pony we ended up with was also from a sales livery where the previous owners had had issues with her. We felt the issues were something we could deal with so took a chance on it, and she’s turned out to be a brilliant buy for my daughter.

I think the key is honesty. If you’ve been honest about him, he’s more likely to find the right home, and then you can feel happy you did the right thing.
I would pick a sales livery where they are prepared to be open about him and take pride in making good matches.

 

[I don’t like mondays]

I did this with my daughter a couple of years ago, bought the poor child something that turned out to be too sharp. I tried everything I could think of to get him calmer, but ultimately she became too scared to ride him and nearly gave up altogether. He went on sales livery, for a bit more money than I paid, but I feel it was justified as the professional spent a few weeks schooling him for me, and presented him beatifically, and did all the legwork speaking to buyers. You would always expect to pay more from a professional yard than a private owner. We were all sad about it, but he went off to a much more suitable home and is happy.

I wouldn’t feel guilty at all. I suspect the previous owners might have also had issues with him they perhaps weren’t totally honest about.

I think you are right. At the very least they certainly played down/didn’t disclose certain things (like how strong he is). I purposely played down my daughters ability too

 

[Winters100]

Thanks again for the advice. The dealer thinks the horse is worth a fair bit more than we paid, I feel awkward about if the original owner sees his ad and it’s more than we paid not very long ago…however he hasn’t turned out to be as we thought at all (quite the opposite) and I’ve offered him back to them (for what I paid) plus I’ve got the risk he might not sell. I’ll obviously be paying sales livery and a cut for the dealer which eat into the price. Dealer (I found on recommendation) and previous owners are from the same part of the country weirdly. It feels wrong to potentially sell for quite a bit more than we paid. Don’t want to profit from this however it’s been a massive headache/ sad time for my child and not a position I wanted to be in

Nothing wrong with selling for a fair market price, and when you take into account all of your costs (vetting on purchase, transport, keeping the horse, training etc) then you probably will not make a profit.

 

[eahotson]

I did this with my daughter a couple of years ago, bought the poor child something that turned out to be too sharp. I tried everything I could think of to get him calmer, but ultimately she became too scared to ride him and nearly gave up altogether. He went on sales livery, for a bit more money than I paid, but I feel it was justified as the professional spent a few weeks schooling him for me, and presented him beatifically, and did all the legwork speaking to buyers. You would always expect to pay more from a professional yard than a private owner. We were all sad about it, but he went off to a much more suitable home and is happy.

I wouldn’t feel guilty at all. I suspect the previous owners might have also had issues with him they perhaps weren’t totally honest about.

That was my experience of selling livery as well.