Red Flags when looking at a horse to buy

Cribbing or windsucking

It’s a strange term for a bad habit horses can develop. They’ll grab hold of something with their top teeth, arch their neck, and suck air inward, making an unmistakable sound. Once you hear it, you won’t forget! They do the same thing when windsucking, but they don’t hold on to the object.

Both are vices often developed due to stress or boredom. Some research says that horses release endorphins when they crib and thus are rewarded for the habit. I personally believe a lot of these so called “stable vices” have been named such for a reason. Horses often develop these habits in stalls or under stress. They don’t usually start to crib when they are turned out on pasture all day and can mentally be a horse.

What do you do if the horse you want to buy is a cribber? Some well-meaning people have developed something called a cribbing collar that wraps tightly around a horse’s neck to discourage cribbing, but these and other similar items are only a Bandaid (and are often somewhat inhumane.) 

If you find you have a cribber or windsucker on your hands, your best option is to make sure your horse has as much pasture turnout as possible, or at least has access to free-choice hay. Sometimes the problem will resolve by itself. A seller might not divulge their horse is a cribber, so check to see if their stall is chewed up at all. There are horses who will eat wooden fences (especially younger horses) so it doesn’t always mean a horse is a cribber if you see chewed boards or stalls, but it might be a red flag to a behavioral issue.

Saddle sores and white spots

Checking a horse’s back is an important part of evaluating their potential. Look where you’d normally put a saddle. Are there areas of hair worn off? Do you see white hair near the withers? If a saddle tree from an ill-fitting saddle pinches a horse and cuts off circulation at a certain pressure point over time, the hair can turn white.

You wouldn’t want to rule out a horse who has had a bad fitting saddle, but just know you’ll need to do a little rehabbing and definitely find a saddle that fits properly (a book unto itself!) This can cure many ills of a horse’s back.

One trick our vet showed us to recognize if a horse’s back is sore is to take a hoof pick or a pen, and without putting any pressure on it, run it gently up and down the horse’s back alongside the spine (but never on the spine) all the way down to the tail. You’ll see the muscle dip if an area is sore. Our vet told us he’d seen a horse completely tuck its hips down because its back was so sore.

There are times a horse’s back muscles will be a little tender, such as after a hard workout, but in general you should not see the back muscles dip on a healthy horse.

Broken at the third vertebrae

This doesn’t actually mean a horse’s neck is broken, but unfortunately in a lot of training techniques today, horses are forced into a frame by pulling on the reins or using devices like draw reins, martingales, and side reins incorrectly. This causes the ligaments in between the vertebrae (3rd & 4th) at the top of their neck to stretch and bend in ways it never should. If this goes on for a long time you visibly see the horse’s neck bend at a sharp angle. An exhaustive article on this subject can be found at the Sustainable Dressage website, but I see this happening in many other disciplines too. http://www.sustainabledressage.net/rollkur/behind_the_vertical.php

Classical dressage trainer Will Faerber of Art2Ride says, “A horse broken in the third vertebrae has what I consider to be the worst fault a horse can have. It’s like having a crimp in your wiring, so to speak. It makes everything short circuit in the training, and until you correct it, it can be very difficult to get the horse to work through the back.”

Learn to spot this deformity (which can be fixed with correct training, but you will need patience.) I would recommend a first-time horse owner not purchase a horse that has been broken at the third or fourth vertebrae.

Aggression

Few horses in this world are truly aggressive genetically (though it does happen.) Most become that way thanks to man. A horse is an amazingly patient, trusting, forgiving animal. But every animal has a breaking point. Take the time to watch your potential horse in his natural environment. Does he pin his ears when his owner comes near? Will he let you touch him all over his body? You should be able to touch a horse on his ears, his head, his withers, his rump, his belly, his legs. Be very careful with this test just in case, but it’s a good way to know if you’ll need to work on something.

Some horses are food aggressive. Maybe when they were young they were turned out in a large herd and were at the bottom of the pecking order and had to learn how to eat this way to survive. 

Mild aggression is a behavioral issue that can be fixed in most cases, but I wouldn’t recommend a beginner buy a horse showing these signs.

The owner won’t ride the horse

Whenever you can, get the owner to ride the horse before you ever get on for a test ride yourself. If they refuse, it’s a good possibility there’s a reason. Our horse Sky was being sold due to her previous owner’s back and health problems, so we weren’t able to have them ride her first; otherwise, I would have.