Buying and selling horses can be a risky business.
Some horse breeders, traders and officials say people should educate themselves on how to accurately describe their horses, as well as be more diligent in their transactions.
Buying a horse should be like buying a car, said Lee Walerius, who breeds and trains Quarter horses and Paints near Warman, Sask.
“You usually do some research.”
But not all horse buyers check their prospective purchases thoroughly. If they don’t, the horse they unload from their stock trailer can seem different than the one the seller led in.
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“We get quite a few calls where people think they’re getting one thing and getting something different, or feel that animals have been misrepresented,” said Les Burwash, manager of horse programs with Alberta Agriculture.
“Unfortunately, the horse trader stories aren’t all myth. There are some unethical people in the horse industry.”
Ed O’Reilly is a dealer and trainer from Millarville, Alta., who buys up to 400 horses per year. He said there are crooks in any business, but the majority of horse dealers are “straight-up” honest folk. He feels ignorance accounts for more deals going sour than misrepresentation.
“There’s no other trading business that I know of that you always end up on the winning side of it,” O’Reilly said, noting that he has been burned himself.
He’d rather buy from a respected horse dealer than from an individual who wants to make some cash. Knowing the purpose for which a horse is best suited and then matching that horse with a rider is a practice that requires skill.
“There’s somewhat of an art to trading horses,” he said.
Brenda Baker is incensed that many horse sellers don’t describe their horses with correct and concise descriptions. They depict their horses with flowery, abstract terms that have little to do with equine terminology.
“A lot of it is pretty close to blatant false advertising,” said Baker, who breeds Tennessee Walking horses near Calgary.
“It’s people that will use descriptions like ‘the horse is to die for.’ You can almost see the person frothing at the mouth as they’re saying these words,” said Baker. “That’s not a horse description.”
Another problem in accurately describing horses for sale is its temperament, a subjective quality to judge. If buyers are inexperienced, unethical sellers can disguise or misinform them about the level of training and the condition of the horse’s mind.
When someone describes their horse as having a “good temperament” Baker wonders what the seller intends this to imply.
“Does this mean the horse smiles at you while you throw him his hay?”
Often buyers believe the horse they have just bought is registered and comes with papers and that isn’t always the case.
“If they’re advertised as a Thoroughbred it means that they have papers. Otherwise they should be advertised as a grade horse, even though they may have Thoroughbred bloodlines,” said Fran Okihiro, national secretary with Thoroughbred Canada. “If somebody says it’s a Thoroughbred, the papers should go with the horse and that doesn’t happen a lot.”
She added that there’s no fee to transfer ownership on a pedigreed Thoroughbred.
Linda Hazelwood, editor and publisher of Horse Country magazine in Winnipeg told buyers they should ask to see registration papers for horses being sold as purebreds.
Burwash said he probably sees misadvertising more frequently with inexperienced sellers, who describe a horse as well broke.
Walerius agreed.
“Everybody has a totally different perspective on what is a trained, green broke or halter broke horse,” she said. “Everyone thinks they’re a trainer.”
Al Hicks, publisher of Equine Trader newspaper and website, said he gets a bit of everything when people send in descriptions of their horses to advertise in the publication, but he has never heard a complaint from a buyer regarding misrepresentation in his publication. He said it’s hard for publishers to regulate the content of advertising because the sellers pay for it.
“Make sure you ask the proper questions when you contact the person about the ad. Decide for yourself if it’s exaggerated,” Hicks said.
Hazelwood said she has also never had a complaint about a horse advertisement in her publication, although she said few sellers include horse vices like kicking or cribbing, nor do they state if their horse has no vices.
But Hazelwood knows that horse buyers do get burned, more
often than not from local auctions, where sellers are usually trying to get rid of an animal that should be slaughtered. She cautioned horse buyers to take their time and not buy the first horse they see.
“It can take years to find the right one,” she said.
Value in horses can’t be measured as objectively as it can in other livestock that are marketed for their product, said Burwash. A lot of personal preference comes into play with overall eye appeal, markings and colour. But when it comes to describing colours, giving the correct description is not necessarily black and white.
The lack of a universal colour and marking system to cover all breeds makes it confusing for the novice and can result in misunderstandings even between experienced horse people.
“I see people describing horses as probably the wrong colour,” said Burwash. “Part of it depends on what breed they’re involved with. For some reason, many breeds will use colours that are only in their breed, even though the same colour exists in other breeds.”
He lists one example as the Quarter horse breed having both sorrel and chestnut colours, whereas the Arabian breed places both colours under the description of chestnuts.
Thoroughbreds are rarely described as black, even if they really are. Instead, brown or black-brown are the commonly used terms. Other colour marking combinations like Appaloosas are easier to identify, especially horses with clearly defined spots or speckles.
Baker said the terms Paint and pinto are often confused. Whereas pinto is a colour pattern found in any breed, a Paint horse is one of Thoroughbred or Quarter horse breeding that displays a pinto colour pattern. She also said that tricolour is a term to describe dogs, not a pinto horse.
Burwash said that in most registries, foals are registered with their colours described when they are young (before one year of age).
Often that colour will look different once it’s shed out and becomes its mature hue.
However, markings are much more straightforward.
“There’s no excuse for missing markings.”
Even inexperienced people should be able to learn about markings and accurately report them, Burwash said.
Marnie Somers, president of the Canadian Quarter Horse Association, said one reason for this lack of horse sense is that society is more urbanized and has less contact with horses.
Two or three generations ago, a lot of people were at least born on the farm and had horse exposure. Now, for many people, horses “just look nice on TV,” said Somers, in an interview from Carberry, Man.
Despite this she believes unethical equine practices are in decline.
“I think it was a problem historically. There’s always unscrupulous people who will take advantage of neophytes in the horse industry. But I think more and more people are becoming educated.”
Somers credited the internet, increasing numbers of horse
whisperers and clinicians and the proliferation of horse magazines and “buyer beware”
articles with raising the level of horse buyers’ awareness.
O’Reilly agreed: “The more educated you are, the less apt you are to get burned. Generally, you get what you pay for. When you do the math on a horse, you’re going to have pay for it to get a good one.”
However, both caution that horse buyers are still taken advantage of now and then, and that can injure the whole equine industry.
“I think that people who misrepresent a horse as being a safe and suitable mount for an inexperienced rider or a child should be taken to task,” Somers said. If a new buyer gets “taken for a ride” on their first purchase, they may shy away from the horse industry in the future.
For someone to be taken to task however, a case needs to be airtight.
Cpl. Ed Turco, of the livestock investigation section of the RCMP in Calgary, said a case must consist of clear-cut facts, not hard feelings.
“There’s a fine line between immoral or illegal, and immoral is not against the law,” he said. “The courts do expect some due diligence on the buyer’s behalf. It puts the onus on the buyer.”
All agree the best advice for potential buyers is to seek out a knowledgeable person who doesn’t have a vested interest in which horse they buy to accompany them on horse-buying missions.
For more information on how to describe a horse’s colourings and markings, go to www.producer.com and type “horse colour guide” in the go box.
