Our horse herd has changed. Over the summer, I decided to put up a few of our horses for sale because it is always a financial strain for us to feed five horses through the winter and I hate having skinny horses fighting over the hay. (Last winter was hard–we ran low on hay and hay quadrupled in cost around here, and the hay we could barely afford to buy was not good quality–it was a nightmare!) So I listed three of them on craigslist, thinking if we sold one then our horse herd would be of a more reasonable number. Me being a horse lover, you can never have too many horses, but until I win the lottery there has to be a limit. We really don’t have the space for five horses, so somebody needed to go.
I put Daisy, Milo, and the baby buckskin gelding for sale, trying to set prices that would be reasonable for a buyer but not make us feel badly about if there were any takers. I had learned my lesson last summer about not stating that my price was FIRM….a girl came and looked at Daisy, rode her, loved her, and then called me back and offered half what I was asking for her. I was offended, to put it mildly. I had spent a lot of energy (while six months’ pregnant!) getting her cleaned up, ready to ride, shown her to the girl and let her ride for an hour, and then she low-balls me with an offer of $300. I paid $800 for Daisy when she was an untrained 4 year old! But I politely declined, and from now on I always put FIRM in bold letters next to the price of the horse.
I have had pretty good success with craigslist, because it is such a local venue it is easy to find a buyer in your area. And sure enough, woman called asking about the horses I was selling, and would any of them be appropriate for an eleven year old kid? I honestly told her I wasn’t sure, but that she was welcome to come out and look at them, have her kid ride them, and see if things “clicked”. I described Milo and Daisy to her, and we set up a time to meet out at the farm.
We put up the round pen in the yard, brushed manes and tails (I had to cut out a whole chunk of Milo’s tail because it was hopelessly knotted), and let the horses graze until the people arrived. I told my husband when the eleven year old got out of the car, “I just knew he would be wearing a big cowboy hat!”, and he was! It was a family of five; the dad, the mom, an older boy, the eleven year old boy, and a seven year old sister. They came over to the round pen to look at the horses.
After deciding they’d like to try Milo out, we let the other horses out to graze again, and they caught Milo, saddled and bridled him, picked up his hooves, and then the boy climbed on. Milo stands about 14 hands, tops, and this kid with his cute little western saddle looked really good on him. The boy had a lot of confidence, and had Milo trotting circles and stopping, backing, changing directions, and working like a good little horse should. At one point, he got him in a lope, but Milo’s hind feet hit some fresh horse manure on the grass, and both hind legs slipped out from under him. I thought the kid was a goner, and yelled, “Hang on!” but I shouldn’t have worried. He just tightened his seat a little and collected the reins and kept on riding. I told his mom that they were an excellent match, because Milo was never going to do anything more ornery than accidentally slip or trip, and from what I had just observed, the boy had more than enough confidence to handle him safely.
It was refreshing to see a family of that caliber. Both parents had grown up with horses, and they really seemed to know what they were doing around them. The mom even rode Milo a little bit after the boy was done riding. The kids all had different interests, but this boy was intent on being a horseman. He had been saving his own money for a horse and was interested in competing in 4-H, as well as trail riding for fun. They told us they were pretty sure Milo was “the one”, but that they’d talk about it and let us know the following day.
After they left, my husband and I talked it over as well. We had mixed emotions about selling Milo. We had bought Milo at auction when he was a runty little 6 month old colt with an umbilical hernia and wormy belly. About a thousand dollars and eight years later, we had corrected his physical problems and also trained him to ride. But we didn’t really ride him that much, he was just one of those naturally-good horses…we figured that my husband had ridden him about seven times total, his brother had ridden him twice, my brother had ridden him once, a visiting friend had ridden him twice, and I had put maybe another fifteen rides on him during the eight years we owned him. That amounts to less than thirty rides, total! That really isn’t enough training to consider a horse well-broke, but Milo had such a good personality, and it wasn’t like him to act up. He had bucked with my husband just once, and had never tried anything ornery with me, though I had often ridden him away from his buddies and made him work. His only fault was being just a little goofy, but never intentionally bad.
It just made sense to sell him, when we took everything into consideration. It was a good family, and they had told us they were taking him to the vet to get a lump on his neck looked at, and they were also sending him to a trainer for at least a month to get him tuned up for 4-H. The boy was so excited about riding, we knew that Milo would get more attention than we ever would have given him, and they said he would be grazing on 10 acres of pasture with a pony for a buddy. I mean, what else could we ask for, really?!!
So they came the next day to get Milo. He was eager to get into their little 2-horse trailer (he’d never been in a small trailer before, but he stepped right in!), and when the boy handed me his carefully saved money, I shook his hand and told him he’d bought a good horse. I was proud of little Milo, happy for the memories of the years we had owned him, but also happy to see him start an even better life with this family.
I have only heard back from them once, to ask what kind of bit Milo is used to. But I am hoping to stay in touch on down the road and hear good news that they are getting along fine. We have noticed that our horses are actually better without Milo, since the herd dynamics are actually a lot more peaceful…we just have the three mares and the two-year-old buckskin gelding now. So we’re happy with how it all turned out.
