A successful day, 3 more horses bought for sensible money. We bought lot 311 by Antarctique a French sire, he's a lovely active horse and we were all very pleased to get him. Lot 280 by Kalanisi, he again is active and a massive improver. Lot 481 a filly by Robin Des Champs, she is gorgeous and I just fell in love with her. If I lead 10 horses past anyone and said tell me which one is the filly only a lucky guess would get it right. If she has the ability to match her looks she will do us proud, she is by the best sire in England and Ireland and will have paddock value too.
If I had had a flight home on Tuesday night I'd have got on it. As it transpired I think we have had a very successful and disciplined sale. With the vendors agreement we scope all the horses we think we would like to buy. However, it has caused a few vendors to complain, they object to this and some got very excited. That is fine by us as we simply won't bid on their horses - that doesn't matter to us. They seem to think it is one-way traffic but it isn't, we were under bidders on 6 others and without us their horses would have made considerably less. My question to vendors is, why should NH store sales be exempt to pre-sales scopes? I take winners of races to horses in training sales and they could be scoped by 3 different vets. The horses have proven ability and have passed the pre-sales vetting as have the NH stores. Yet, if I want to sell my horses I am forced to allow them to be scoped by prospective purchasers. Vendors of untried NH store horses expect others to buy their horses without the use of a scope. Astonishing in my mind!! If I buy a car I am allowed an independent mechanic to inspect it, if I buy a house I am allowed a surveyor to survey it. But if I which to buy a horse I am frowned upon by many vendors for wanting to thoroughly inspect my potential purchase. The long and short of it is, some vendors understand my situation, others don't. The ones that don't will find others to buy their horses and we can all get along quite nicely in my mind. I don't see the issue and we will not be changing our policy of scoping horses before buying them.
I sold 3 horses privately this year, all of them had to gallop, tendons were scanned and the scope was used after galloping to check for any bleeding. I saw 3 lame horses this week all of which had 2 clean vet certificates????
