by Marcella Gruchalak

Horse shopping is stressful, especially when you don’t bring home the horse you thought you bought.

Horse shopping is an extremely stressful and overwhelming situation. Looking for a horse that’s the perfect fit takes time and plenty of searching. You browse multiple search engines such as Facebook, Google and Craigslist, scanning hundreds of ads daily. Finally, you narrow it down to which horses you’d like to visit. The horses you’ve picked out have a description meeting your qualifications and their videos show healthy, sound moving, sane minded animals.

Regardless of the well written ad, high quality videos and pleasant phone conversation with the current owner, once you’re on site ready to meet and ride the horse, there can be multiple red flags that indicate this horse isn’t what’s advertised.

1. Upon arrival the horse is sweaty. If the horse you’re going to see is sweaty, especially in the area where the saddle sits, this is a good indicator that the horse has been worked before you arrived. The horse may be high energy and the owner may have worked her beforehand to guarantee you a more pleasant ride.

This situation may be the most difficult to bridle (pun intended). Two ways to grapple with this circumstance are to be frank and ask why the horse has sweat marks or to arrive early to prevent it from happening.

Read more: 5 Red Flags You Should Not Ignore When Horse Shopping (And How to Address Them)

by Juliet M. Getty, Ph.D.

We know they’re out there. Horses who are enjoying life. Horses who are brimming with health – strong muscles, shiny coats, hard hooves, good digestion, normal metabolism, strong immune function – just plain healthy! How does this happen? What is it about their care and feeding that gives them such wellbeing?

We’re always searching for answers. Our typical approach is to study sick horses. But that only helps us to understand disease. We look at fat horses to understand fat horses.

We look at horses with pain, metabolic problems, and digestive ailments to understand those who are experiencing the same hardships. While such research is worthwhile, wouldn’t it also make sense to evaluate fit, hearty horses so we can strive to make our own horses be more like them? Shouldn’t we be looking at what healthy horses experience?

Here’s the basic “recipe” for a healthy horse:

Avoid feeding excess calories. Obesity is a real problem and it comes from piling on the calories, combined with lack of physical activity. Forage should be the dietary staple and it should flow steadily throughout the horse’s entire gastrointestinal tract. Pounds and pounds of concentrated feeds can shorten a horse’s life.

Read more: The Secret to Healthy Horses? Keep it Simple!