We bought a mare from Jack and Janice Williams that they assured us was sound and currently being ridden by their daughter in barrel races and themselves in mounted shooting. They also assured us that if we decided not to ride her she was a great producer and several neighbors had colts out of her. We found their ad on Dreamhorse.com and had visited with them on the phone, but did buy the mare without going to see her in person. They talked about being Christians and that "we" Christians need to take care of each other. When the mare arrived she was very thin and needed several weeks of feeding before we felt she was healthy enough to show. We rode her for a couple of short rides and agreed she was a very well trained horse.
When she was healthy enough to ride we started legging her up to show and after her first show she was unwilling to change leads. After a few more weeks of riding, she was limping. We started corrective shoeing, rest, massage, and bute. Vet x-rays of her knees showed only slight arthritis. Nothing seemed to alleviate her limping. We decided to breed her so our purchase wouldn't be a total loss. Our vet spent two months trying to AI her with no success.
We took her to a equine specialist that x-rayed her foot and found lower ring-bone, a condition that he said was old enough that she had to have had it when we got her. This specialist also tried AIing her for two months and after she still wouldn't hold a embryo for more than a month we tried pasture breed with no success. We now have a lame horse that can't be bred and have spent over $10,000 total on this venture.
We contacted Jack and Janice and told them everything we had done and that our vet said she had the lower ring bone when she arrived. We felt that if they were going to sell us a horses saying that "Christians take care of one another" that we could work out some sort of a refund. We didn't ask for reimbursement for all of our lost money, because as a horse owner you expect those kind of expenses. We offered to return her to them for a refund of our original purchase price. We also were willing to visit about other options. Their responses was "she isn't our horse, she's your problem now".
We just wanted to let others know about our experience because we have noticed that Williams have several horses for sale on Dreamhorse and we would hate for someone else to go through what we have.
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