08/17/2026
*** SHOULD A HORSE BE FOR LIFE? ***
This question is something Iโve often contemplated, and never been able to fully answer. I donโt sell my horses; if they donโt do the job I hope theyโll do, they either switch jobs or retire; if theyโre injured and unable to compete, they retire. If I had to keep them all in livery yards, I wouldnโt be able to afford to do that, so until I bought my yard in 2019, we rented very basic fields (no stables, no concrete, no electricity, no school, and sometimes no mains water) to enable all of my horses to stay with me for life.
Looking after the number of horses I currently have - 8 in total - is incredibly expensive and extremely time consuming. So is money the reason we buy and sell horses in the same way we exchange cars? Horses are expensive to keep, and often horse owners struggle to pay for one horse kept at a livery yard, so if that horse isnโt the right one for the job, then the rider has to give up their dreams and ambitionsโฆ..or the horse must be sold to a more suitable home.
Someone once said to me, โwell, horses arenโt really the same as dogs, are they? Dogs are more part of the family.โ That really stuck with me, as to me, my horses are absolutely my family; I spend more time with my horses than I do with my family. Granted, I chose not to have children, so maybe I have that โluxuryโ of being able to stay with my horses until 7/8pm every day, and spend every other free minute I have with them.
I guess many people with horses view them as something to enjoy for an hour or so a day, and to check on quickly a couple of times a day. But when, or how, did horses become a commodity, and why arenโt they treated as a family member, like a dog or cat? Why are they allowed to develop a relationship with their human, to then be sold on to another human a year or so later, and wonder where their first human has gone? The more I have thought about this topic, the more I can only come up with one answer. Cost. Our domestic pets are obviously much smaller, eat less, can be housed alongside us at home, donโt need their feet tending to, donโt need to graze or eat expensive hay all day. With my lot currently munching ยฃ25 of haylage every single day at the moment, itโs definitely tempting to shift a few of them off to pastures new! That is unfortunately/fortunately a joke!
Iโve obviously bought many horses over the years, but having bred and produced two of my own, there is absolutely a difference in their personalities. My homebreds, who have never experienced new homes/new people, donโt have one iota of tension at home. Any new horse always takes time to settle and adjust, and some people report horses taking many months or even years to settle into a new home. Is this fair? And if that horse is sold a few times during his life, thatโs years of his life spent scared and anxious, whilst he settles into a new home. I was offered a life changing sum of money for Johnnie (we are talking upwards of ยฃ300k to give you an idea), but he was my horse, and part of my family, and was going nowhere.
This post isnโt to judge anyone; my late aunt was a superb โhorse dealerโ and found many, many horses and ponies wonderful homes. Itโs a post to generate thought, and because I genuinely donโt understand how it would be, and is, frowned upon to sell our dogs on if they ended up not being right for us, and yet we have websites dedicated to selling horses on that donโt suit our needs.
Food for thought!
