Re: horses wanted, kids and values

[MBlanchrd@aol.com]

re:  ""Blasting"" a kid who was looking for a horse...

If the girl had started out her letter with "I'm a horse crazy 12 year old 
girl looking for a good horse, and this is all that  I can afford." she 
probably would have had a hundred offers. All of us know what it's like to be 
horse crazy.......we wouldn't be here if we didn't.

 But her letter was written as if she were an adult. (Her letter also 
sounded, in retrospect, as if she was doing this on her own, without parental 
permission, knowledge, supervision or approval.) As I had no idea it was a 
child writing it, I took the letter as being from an adult. And the adult was 
looking for a horse for what it sounded to be a very short period of 
time....a week? a summer? 
And what happens to the horse then? What were the horses to be, mere 
entertainment, like an animated toy, to be disposed of after the kids leave? 
We all know what happens to horses that someone's gotten tired of....just 
like the dog pound is full of dogs and cats that were cute as puppies and 
kittens but were disposed of after the family got bored with having to care 
for them.

And again, I don't deny that there are many, many good horses out there going 
for little money. My own horse cost me $1000 and is worth far more than that. 
Perhaps not monetarily...but in abilities, in trustworthiness, in the love 
and bonding we have...he's priceless.  The point of my letter was NOT "I put 
this much money into this horse, so he must be worth that much."   The point 
I objected to was the writer's basic demand......"I want a horse that does 
this, this, and this and this is ALL I intend to pay." 

And she wrote to a horse breeder. Having spent many of my teen years working 
on a QH breeding farm, I KNOW what it costs to produce horses. It's NOT 
cheap. It's a business! You have to make money to stay in business. There's 
people out there who despise the professionals who are breeding horses..I 
don't know why, otherwise, where would purebreds come from? I certainly 
cannot afford to go over to England, track down the last 100% pure Crabbet 
bred stallion, import him and breed him to 100% Crabbet mares. But someone 
else can, and someone else did, and I can afford to buy a horse from the 
breeder. 
While I'm certain that horse breeders understand why  starry eyed little 
girls write them, wanting to buy horses for what seems (to the girl), 
astronomical amounts of money, the breeder also have to stay in business. 
This is why, I think (I'm not speaking for the Strands but in defense of 
them) that they put the letter on ridecamp to begin with. If you recall, they 
said, "can anybody help this person?"

No, I don't feel remorse for slamming  someone who wrote in under a false 
flag. You come in with a phony front, you better be ready to take the flames 
once you're found out. There's a vast difference between being dishonest and 
being wrong.   I've made mistakes, said things I should not have, right here 
on ridecamp and at the top of my literary lungs, and  I"ve taken the flames 
for it. And it's always been with my name right out there for everyone to 
see. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it...but I'm not a liar, and never will be.

Michelle Blanchard
Rochester, WA


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