The one that got away…

Chonkers said:
A grey 15.3 TB/ID cross mare named Melody Blue. I loved her and would have taken her home in a heartbeat but… I also knew I wasn’t the correct home for her. She was a mare who would have thrived in a livery/ competition environment and I keep mine at home and don’t compete, she would have been bored out of her tree!
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I don’t know why but this horse is ringing a bell with me. Was it being sold by a lady Essex way who show jumped? The horse had just come back into work?
 
IrishMilo said:
I just looked up his ad from a few years ago. What a beautiful boy. I wonder where he is now.
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My sister still kicks me for picking the arab over him (she is understandably not impressed by my decision and wishes she had bought the QH herself). He was a lovely horse but I really thought he would itch himself to death on all our shelters and be miserable. Had I had all the money and time in the world could have brought them both home for £7k!! I do wonder where he is.
 
I sometimes think about Paddy.

My best friend's brother once found a horse for me, a gelding, 8 years old, 15h I think (I'm surprised I can't remember this detail) and, in his words on the telephone, 'I wouldn't be embarrassed to take him into a lead class'. He was apparently a calm and sensible horse and David thought him suitable for me. He had the price of $2500.

I was expecting a phone call from Paddy's owner (some guy I didn't know) and as 8.00pm approached I was getting excited. On the dot, of course, I was right near the phone. As the minutes went by, I was a little, you know, walking around the lounge room no doubt.

And then it was quite a bit later, idk, maybe 20 past, half past, and I said out loud to my partner, "I wonder why he's late..." and do you know what my twit of a husband said? "He's probably calling the vet." My partner and I both have an appalling sense of humour at times and I yelled at him.

Well, Paddy's owner had had to call the vet.

He'd been late to feed the horses that evening, and when he got there, Paddy had had an accident and broken his leg. So he was put down.

So sad for all involved.

I never met Paddy. I've never met the man who owned him. I'm sure they were both lovely.
 
BBP2 said:
Some lovely stories here. Funny how some horses grab you so much when you barely even know them.
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You sent me down the rabbit hole of trying to find B'stard (apparently he was... interesting as a yearling 🤪 then the name stuck). I remember there being a fb post about him shortly after he sold, but I can't find it for the life of me. Nor any other posts under his stable name, or his passported name. I could be misspelling the latter though.

It definitely taught me that if I feel that strongly about an individual, I should go with my gut.
 
A yard I worked at had a young section D in on livery, to potentially be brought on and used in the riding school. Except he was a section D, a bit sharp and green as grass, and nobody really had enough time to put into him to bring him on. I absolutely fell in love with him - he was so beautiful it literally made me well up with tears looking at him 😂

When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to be suitable, the owner was made aware of how much I’d fallen for him, and she contacted me to discuss offering him to me on full loan. But I turned the offer down as I wasn’t in a position to at the time, and this horse deserved The Absolute Best of everything. I don’t think I’d have had the skills to bring him on myself, and I knew I’d need a lot of support, which I just couldn’t afford at the time. Think he just went back to his owner as a pampered pet. I still think of him sometimes!

But a few months later, when my circumstances had changed considerably, I started working with another of the school horses who was rehabbing from a fractured splint bone, and ended up buying him off them as he was proving too sharp once back in full work. And that was the horse in my profile pic 🥹🖤 (edit for typo)
 
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Well I don't know. With a yard full of retirees and youngsters, I viewed a horse this week. He has not been advertised but strangely enough I saw his ad a year ago (4 hrs from me) and thought he is lovely and then he sold. He is looking for a new home and through a twist of fate I met him this week (moved slightly closer) and he was like an old acquaintance. He has to have a 'good' vetting though, as I have had so much heartbreak, so we shall see. Fingers crossed.
 
15 years ago I saw a 4 yo pure bred Arab mare for sale - there really was something about her for me. I arranged to see and vet her having checked out as much as I could but it snowed too heavily for me to get there from home. I asked the vendor to wait a couple of days for the weather to settle but was told the mare would go in a group of 10 to the middle East instead. I kept track of her for 6 months in Dubai and some time after that I read she'd died. I can't really bear to think about it even now...
 
BBP2 said:
Lots of posts right now on buying and selling and it made me wonder if any of you have a ‘one that got away’ horse? One that you saw advertised/went to view and for whatever reason decided not to buy, and have thought about them ever since?

In 2024, filled with grief over losing BBP and with my stunning youngster clearly showing something wrong that I wasn’t sure would ever come right, I ended up viewing two lovely young horses. One of those was a really striking grulla quarter horse with a big white face, just down the road from me. He was way out of my budget but when I made an enquiry it turned out they had just dropped the price. When I went to view him, he was the loveliest guy, but he had what to me was a real pain face expression in his eye and quite severe sweet itch (which could have been the cause of the pain face), so for those reasons I decided not to buy him and instead went for the emotional part bred arab with a club foot who was about 5 hours away, but who was an absolute darling on viewing and I just felt a connection there. Turns out she has hated moving homes and has, to be honest, been a bit of a nightmare (but despite all the things I say about her, I do love her!).

I know I made the decision not to buy him for the right reasons, but I keep looking back at that sliding doors moment and wondering what life would look like if I had chosen differently. My Connemara gelding could have had a big gelding friend to annoy which might have made him happier, the QH could have been backed and riding away by now, and if those things had happened I probably wouldn’t now also own two mini Shetlands (well, technically I only own one of them). Sometimes I think maybe I’ll find him again one day. Like a romcom ending but with ponies.

Anyone else had a ‘one that got away’ horse?
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I hope you find him one day.

This could be a whole new genre of books - horse romance. I like it.
 
Cassie

About 15h. Very feisty. The local riding school had picked her up from a dealer but she was far too hot for 99.9% of their clients. I wasn't earning enough to have my own but I did a deal with the RS owner that I could keep her there and she'd be used for a couple of lessons per week.

Was sorting out the £500 for her and bam colic. He called the hunt she was in so much pain. I was working away and was devastated.

In hindsight she was probably a vet bill waiting to happen (that kind of feisty!) but I adored her.
 
At one time, my old instructor, who has a soft spot for ponies in trouble, had taken a risk on a young sports horse who couldn't stop decking people at the same time as I was recovering from a very serious head injury. I wasn't allowed to ride for I think 4 months, I was barely allowed to go up stairs unescorted. The pony, Midnight, wasn't doing anything much either as there wasn't even really a rider for him. So we just hung out together while my sister had her Sunday morning lessons, I gave him a groom, we had a chat. He wasn't the most open creature I've ever met but he was very beautiful and a little traumatised and I was more than a little depressed so obviously I got so attached, so fast.

When I was cleared to ride again, and he had a bit of decompression time I did get to sit on him and he was the wriggliest little eel of a pony, I've still never sat on anything like him, and he tried very hard and he did very well but he definitely wasn't a riding school pony so when it came time for him to find a new home... the dream ended as I didn't have the money, didn't have the time going to university an hour away from the yard, still couldn't drive, mum couldn't help. So sold he was. Never heard anything about him ever again. I'm sure my instructor knew how he was getting on but I never brought myself to ask.

I heard someone talking to a pony called Midnight at an arena hire a year or so ago. Steel grey with dapples, the right height, young and wriggly looking, could have been his double but my Midnight would be in his 20s by now and pure white, so just a reminder.
 
palo1 said:
15 years ago I saw a 4 yo pure bred Arab mare for sale - there really was something about her for me. I arranged to see and vet her having checked out as much as I could but it snowed too heavily for me to get there from home. I asked the vendor to wait a couple of days for the weather to settle but was told the mare would go in a group of 10 to the middle East instead. I kept track of her for 6 months in Dubai and some time after that I read she'd died. I can't really bear to think about it even now...
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OMG. SNAP! I actually had to count back on my fingers to make sure we were not talking about the same mare! I hadn't realised that this exporting to Dubai was so common, though I still have deep resentment towards the people who sent my 'got away' one there.
 
Littlest Hobo said:
OMG. SNAP! I actually had to count back on my fingers to make sure we were not talking about the same mare! I hadn't realised that this exporting to Dubai was so common, though I still have deep resentment towards the people who sent my 'got away' one there.
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Yes, it really hurt tbh. I'm not sure what it was about that particular horse but I would have bought her. Whether we'd have made a ridden partnership didn't seem massively important at that time. I haven't got polite words for the mass exportation of Arab horses and now even part breds to feed Middle Eastern endurance. To think of that beautiful young mare in 'training' and then dying/abandoned in god knows what circumstances still really upsets me. I stopped supporting endurance a fair while ago but that is another subject....Sweet mare, I hope her passing was quick. 😭
 
@BBP2, thank you so much for starting this thread.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time over the last couple of days trying to track mine down and I've found him. He's got his own Instagram and is absolutely adored by his owner. I can finally stop with the what ifs - he's happy, healthy and it looks like he has a fantastic, varied life.
 
SEL said:
Cassie

About 15h. Very feisty. The local riding school had picked her up from a dealer but she was far too hot for 99.9% of their clients. I wasn't earning enough to have my own but I did a deal with the RS owner that I could keep her there and she'd be used for a couple of lessons per week.

Was sorting out the £500 for her and bam colic. He called the hunt she was in so much pain. I was working away and was devastated.

In hindsight she was probably a vet bill waiting to happen (that kind of feisty!) but I adored her.
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Oh god my heart horse was called Cassie and also died of colic (not an RS though)


💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

I'm so sorry about your Cassie
 
Yes, a couple. One was a 6yo TB mare, seemingly a saint and so affectionate (she immediately put her forehead on my chest and I cuddled her face). But I didn't like the person selling - a young woman producer/ dealer, she was awkward with questions and appeared to care little for the horse (eg, my 16st YO had gone along with me to view and said to the seller whilst I was riding how she wished she could ride said horse. Seller said why not? YO said I'm 16st, seller didn't seem to have a problem with that) and the mare's withers were rubbed raw, hairless and swollen, I felt that this was no state in which to sell a horse (and she was £2.5k so not cheap for a failed racehorse). I passed because in addition to that, I wondered what health issues the sad little mare was hiding and I was actually out shopping for a companion 🤦‍♀️ I later felt guilty but when I contacted again I was told she had sold.

Second one was a polo pony in the next village to my yard - advertised on retired/rehoming polo pony page where those looking for homes for their ponies may only ask for a maximum of £500 rehoming fee. This seller wanted the maximum allowed price for her "much loved unicorn", "forever home wanted, would like to stay in touch" blah, blah. I thought what better? A private yard you can see from your home? Another old polo pony for company? Polo pony experience? I thought I would be "picked" as the new home for this pony (a Hispano (sp) Arab and low goal ladies' pony so would have suited me better than the one I already have). But the best home thing was all balls, what she actually want was for someone to hand over cash and take the horse away ASAP. She was renting out her yard which she admitted was paying her mortgage and she wanted her horse gone so she could charge the tenant more money for the two tiny bare paddocks and used my interest to hurry someone else up. I was annoyed and my feeling was that she didn't really care where the horse went at all.
 
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