horse people are crazy

oh the joys of crazy horse people...

at the end of june, we found a buyer for matilde the wonder horse, as sabin has outgrown her and it was time for her to go to another family. the people seemed very nice and thus we agreed to an arrangement where they got to take matilde home for one week to try her out, whereafter they would make a first payment on her and then the second payment august 1. they wanted to see if she would get along with their other horses and if they liked her, which was ok with us if it meant finding the right home for her.

after one week, they had had shoes put on her and had nothing but gushing praise for her. she fit them like a glove, got along with their other two horses and was just their very dream of a pony. we were happy and they were happy. we truly thought we'd found a great home for her and that's what we had most hoped for. then, the time for the second payment rolled around and lo and behold there were suddenly a whole lot of very insurmountable problems with her hooves. we've always had shoes on her, but took them off last december when we brought her home and weren't going to be riding her. her hooves have a tendency to flake off around the edges, so she's a horse that rather needs shoes on. but there's not really anything wrong with them per se and she's never been lame. they needed work when they took her home and we recognized that, so i reduced the price by the cost of one shoeing.

now, i'm being bombarded with texts filled with ridiculous lengthy statements on how there are long-term problems with her hooves and one has a big bump on the side and how it will be months and months and perhaps never be able to be fixed. funny how the farrier she had there during that trial week never mentioned any of that when he put the shoes on her.

turns out they're using a vet that we know from sad experience is a real piece of work. misleading people into having unneeded x-rays and diagnosing dire problems that require loads and loads of veterinary visits on horses that don't actually have a problem. all for their own gain, because they know that horse people are gullible are completely batshit crazy will do anything for their animals. she also tried to tell me that matilde so badly needed her teeth floated that it cost extra (she had had it done by this vet), despite the fact that she'd had her teeth floated by a trustworthy vet less than a year ago and there was simply no way it could have been as bad as they told her.

luckily, at the beginning, before they took her home, we both signed a written contract which states that we know of no problems with the horse (which is the truth), but that there is no guarantee, as she is 15 and a living animal. so they will have to cough up the rest of the money or we will go get her. i really don't want to do that, as we'll just have to start this process all over again and chances are the next person will have just as much of a crazy horse person brain.

i'm still hopeful we'll work it out and that we can be happy that matilde found a good home (because it genuinely did seem like a good home). i just think it really sucks when a dishonest vet intervenes and causes trouble.