'Tis the season....

Fall is fast approaching. School starts for H on the 18th of August. At work the student athletes are starting to trickle back, and the faculty are reappearing after escaping for whatever part of the summer they claim as their own.

This time of year I'm usually scrambling to squeeze in SD State Fair horse show preparations like vet checks for health certificates, the farrier, and tack cleaning around everything else.

But this year will be a gap year as the State Fair show goes. Last year's Arabian Show had 8 horses - 4 were Flaming Star farm entries. Another farm brought four, and that was it. Bleh. BO doesn't want to do the open show, because, "how will a non-Arabian judge even know how to place Arabians." O-k-ay.... But if they win or place well, isn't that a positive? It's not a discussion I'm going to win with her, and the open show date doesn't work for me anyway, so scratch that as an option.

She's now discussing downsizing her horse herd. No babies for the last three years for various reasons, and the market for Arabians in SD wasn't strong to start with. So now she has six mares of various ages that haven't foaled for three years. Three are broke to ride, two of them well, one I'd consider very green but willing. All of them are healthy, handleable, and they're nice mares both breeding and personality-wise.

They are not, however, apt to sell, through no fault of their own.

I see the situation thusly: You, the owner, have horses you'd like to sell. Those horses are worth whatever they're worth to you, personally. It's your right to put whatever price on them that you want. But however much you may like your particular breeding, color, type, etc., the market will NOT necessarily agree.

Even assuming you have good horses - horses that people might want to buy IF they knew about them - you still have to get the word out to those people!!!!

Talking up horses you might want to sell to two or three people does not constitute advertising, nor, unless you are very lucky, will such a method reliably produce results unless you're a) lucky enough to talk to the right person, b) in possession of a very good reputation and/or have well-known, well-exposed horses, or c) you're a horse dealer or otherwise involved enough in the horse industry to have lots of horsey friends that find your horses desirable (see pt. a).

If you're actually going to advertise, bare bones advertisements listing nothing more than the horses' names, ages, bloodlines & registration status, and whether or not they are "broke to ride" are, of course, better than nothing.

But it's certainly not the most effective method of selling something, particularly not a horse.

People like to see pictures. Preferably good pictures. Pictures in which the horses are nicely posed, clean, and healthy. If they're trained to do something useful, so much the better. A good description with attention to spelling, grammar, and some knowledge of what's marketable and what makes you sound asinine also helps.

Yes, advertising properly does cost money.

But if you're serious about selling, and would like to find a good home for horses you claim to love very much, isn't it worth the time, effort and expense that it will take to place them?

GRRRRRrrrr!!! I hate coming home mad, but when the topic comes up I just can't be sympathetic with her on this one.

Venting aside, there are two very nice Egyptian-related Arabian mares in their late teens available for a good price. They're both lovely, sound, easy keepers, up-to-date on shots, farrier visits, worming, etc. Both were professionally trained western, and are a pleasure to ride. You can see more information on the farm's sales page. I'd lean toward wanting to see Lace placed with a lighter rider, mostly due to her size.

Of the younger mares, I'm not sure which the BO's decided she can bear to part with. They are all easy to handle, easy to catch, and similarly up-to-date on feet & health stuff. They're not started, but it wouldn't take much for someone with the know-how, space, and time to do it, and my guess is she'd consider reasonable offers for any of them.

Truly, I'm hoping that this whim of hers will blow over for the time being.

Ideally, T and I would find that acreage in the country, and they could all come home with me, but that's not an immediate solution. In the meantime... I'm going to start taking some decent pictures of the girls, check classified sites for information, and look into paying for some decent advertising.