Most people walk into a viewing with no plan and leave with an impression. The questions to ask when buying a horse are not a formality you work through to be polite, they are the only tool you have for finding out what the advert left out. A good seller will answer all of them without hesitation. A seller who becomes vague at a particular question has just told you where to look. This guide sets out what we ask, in the order we ask it, and what the answers actually mean.
In this guide
What to ask before you travel
A viewing in another country costs a day and a flight. Four questions on the phone will save you most of the wasted trips.
Why is the horse for sale? Ask it first and listen to how long the answer takes. “The rider has gone to university” is a real reason. “He needs a different job” is a reason too, and it is the one worth following up, because the next question is which job he was failing at.
How long have you had him? A horse that has been in the same yard for three years has a history somebody can tell you. A horse bought six weeks ago is being traded, and the person selling him may know very little about him.
Has he been vetted recently, and did he pass? Ask both halves. Plenty of horses on the market have failed a vetting for somebody else, and there is no obligation on the seller to volunteer that unless you ask.
Can you send video from this week? Not the sales video. This week, unedited, including the walk. A seller who cannot produce a two minute phone clip of the horse working is telling you something about the horse’s current condition.
Questions about the horse’s history
You are trying to build a timeline with no gaps in it. Gaps are where the problems live.
Ask who bred him, who has owned him since, and how many of those owners there were. Ask what he was doing at four, at five, and in each season since. Ask when his last competition was, and if there is a gap of more than a few months, ask what he was doing during it. Turned out, injured, sold, or standing in a field because nobody had time are four very different answers.
Then check the story yourself. Competition records are public in most of Europe, and a horse’s results will tell you whether the account you have just been given is accurate. If the seller says he was jumping 1.30 all last season and the record shows two starts at 1.10, you do not need to argue about it, you just need to know.
Soundness and veterinary history
Ask these before the vetting, not after. The vetting confirms or contradicts what you were told, and it is far more useful when you already know what you were told.
Has he ever had time off for injury, and how long? Has he had joint injections, and when, and which joints? Is he on any medication now? Has he had colic or surgery? Does he have any kissing spine, navicular or tendon history? Who is your vet, and may our vet speak to them?
That last question is the one that does the most work. A seller with nothing to hide will hand over the vet’s number. A seller who refuses it has made the decision easy for you.
None of this replaces an examination. It tells you what the examination should concentrate on, and it gives your vet somewhere to start. Our guide to what a five stage vetting covers and costs explains what you are buying when you book one.
How the horse is kept and worked
This is where you find out whether the horse will still be the same horse in your yard.
How much is he ridden, and by whom? How much turnout does he get, and alone or in company? What is he fed? Is he shod in front, behind, both, or barefoot, and does he have any farriery issues? Does he need lungeing before he is ridden? Does he travel, load and clip without a fight? Is he good with the vet and the farrier?
A horse ridden six days a week by a professional and turned out for eight hours a day will feel different after a month with an amateur and a small paddock. That is not a fault in the horse. It is a fact about the purchase that you want to know in advance rather than discover.
Questions to ask at the viewing itself
Ask to see the horse in the stable before he is tacked up. Ask whether he has already been worked today. A horse that has been lunged for forty minutes before you arrived will show you a temperament he does not have.
Ask the rider what he is like on a bad day, and what they would warn the next owner about. Phrased that way it is a fair question and most riders answer it honestly, because it lets them be useful rather than defensive.
Ask to ride him yourself, and ask to see him jump a line rather than single fences. Ask to see him away from home if the horse is a serious candidate. Ask whether you can come back a second time. A seller who will not allow a second viewing is applying pressure, and pressure is information.
Paperwork and ownership
Ask to see the passport on the day, not a photograph of it afterwards. Check that the markings diagram matches the horse standing in front of you, and that the microchip number in the passport is the number that comes up when it is scanned.
Ask who legally owns the horse, and whether that is the person you are negotiating with. Shared ownership is common and perfectly normal, but every owner has to agree to the sale. Ask whether the horse is on loan, leased, or subject to any agreement with a previous owner, such as a clause giving them first refusal or a share of the resale.
Ask for the UELN and the FEI number if he has one. Both let you verify the horse independently, and a seller who will not give you the number on a horse you are seriously considering is an answer in itself.
Price, and what is included
Ask what the price includes. Tack is sometimes included and sometimes quietly not. Ask who pays for the vetting, who arranges transport, and who carries the risk and the insurance between the payment and the horse’s arrival.
Ask whether there is any commission in the price, and who is being paid it. Ask whether the price is negotiable before you make an offer, rather than discovering afterwards that it never was.
Ask what happens if the horse fails the vetting. The answer should be that the sale does not proceed and any deposit is returned. Get that in writing before you pay anything. For the wider picture on budgeting a purchase abroad, see how to buy a showjumper in Europe.
Answers that should end the viewing
Some answers are not warnings, they are conclusions. Walk away if the seller will not let your own vet do the examination, or insists on using theirs. Walk away if the passport is not available on the day. Walk away if you are told another buyer is coming this afternoon and the horse needs a deposit now.
Walk away if the microchip does not match the passport, if you are asked to pay anyone other than the registered owner, or if the answer to a direct question about veterinary history changes between the phone call and the viewing.
None of these are rare. All of them are cheaper to find at the yard than after the lorry has left.
If you would rather not ask any of this yourself
Asking a stranger in another language whether their horse has had joint injections is uncomfortable, and most buyers do not do it properly. That is most of what a buyer’s agent is for. We ask these questions before you travel, we check the competition record and the passport ourselves, and we see the horse in person so that you are deciding on a real account rather than a sales video.
You can read about working with a buyer’s agent, or look at the showjumpers we currently have for sale. Every horse on that page has already been through this list.
Selling rather than buying? We have a separate guide to how to sell a horse.
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