Today we are talking about regrets.
I am going to share a story that many of my clients can relate to.
Purchasing or trading for the wrong horse!
We had a decent grade buckskin gelding that we had traded training for. He had a few quirks that made him not safe for a beginner, but he was great when he had a job. We trained him to work cows and looked for a ranch home for him.
I had a client looking for an older registered beginner rope horse.
I had a guy contact me about wanting our ranch horse, and he had a horse he would like to trade that sounded like it would fit the bill for our client.
I agreed to the trade without doing a thorough evaluation. When I got time to work him 2 days later, I not only found that he was not as well trained as portrayed, but that he was also lame. X-rays and farrier visits could not account for the lameness. We could not figure out how to fix him.
We wound up finding a home for him that needed a companion and was willing to continue the investigation into the lameness. However, we did not gain anything from that but experience.
Evaluations are so important when purchasing a horse. This is why I believe so deeply in them, that we do them for FREE! I encourage everyone to take advantage of that.
The moral to this story, I believe we all have regrets. I also believe we are all hard on ourselves about those regrets. Really the only thing to do is to look at them as a learning opportunity. Find the positive in what happened and move on wiser. Life has its tough moments. That’s when it’s time to Get Ranchy.
