Jelly

I'd been getting ready (aka saving!) to buy a second horse to event alongside my mare for a long time. While I had quite specific wants (in terms of how the horse would jump, in particular) I was really quite open-minded on age, height, gender, specific experience, etc. And so I knew that there would be lots of horses on the market whose sellers would feel they met my criteria, on paper at least. While I'm fairly confident making judgements about whether I like a horse when I see it / hear more about it, I knew that realistically there are probably a fair few horses out there who'd fit the bill for me, so I could see myself drowning under a sea of a zillion adverts to enquire about, and struggling to find the time to do loads of viewings ... while also trying to run a business and do everything else we all have to do! I could see it getting stressful. So I had decided several months before I was ready to get started that when the time came, I'd see what Ben could come up with, as the idea of having help to narrow it down was very appealing! Well, when the time did come, because of the timing of some life / work stuff, I also worked out I had quite a specific time window in which I wanted to find the horse too, in order hopefully to be able to get out and about with it this season.  

I gave Ben a few very specific criteria - things that you don't tend to be able to tell reliably from adverts, so they needed that extra little bit of knowledge about the seller, or conversation with them, to uncover. Some of the criteria were very reasonable "must haves" and there were also some "nice to haves".

Ben has a system and is very efficient, which really worked well for me - so do be ready to go. Within a couple of days he'd forwarded a couple of horses, both of which I was happy to see. They were very different from each other in terms of type, height, experience, age etc and very different to ride - but both had the key qualities I was looking for. One wasn't on the open market but the owner was potentially prepared to sell to the right person. And I'd actually seen the other one advertised but on the basis of the advert I wouldn't have felt motivated to pick up the phone - but with the additional info Ben was able to pass on from the vendor, there was much more to go on. I saw both of them over the next couple of days, had great viewings with lovely vendors, and really liked them both (yeh be careful you don't end up trying to buy all the horses!)

So going via Ben meant that within a week I'd seen two horses that I wouldn't otherwise have seen, both of which I really liked. He's super speedy going to and fro between you and the vendors, and it was definitely way more efficient than me trying to keep up with adverts while also juggling everything else. In the end after a second viewing, it was the horse who hadn't been on the open market who came home with me. She's called Jelly, she's the bravest showjumper turned eventer you ever did meet (which was one of the specific types of horse I had in mind!) and she's fab - as is her previous owner Phoebe who gave me loads of time and consideration to make sure the match felt right to her, too.

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