How to Buy a Showjumping Horse: A Practical Checklist (UK & Europe)

Start with the brief, not the horses

The most expensive mistake in this market is looking before deciding. Once you have watched six videos you are comparing horses against each other rather than against what you actually need, and the horse that photographs best wins.

Write down four things before you open a single listing:

Who is riding it. Not aspirationally. The person who will sit on it every week.

What certainty you need. A horse with a record costs several times a horse with a pedigree. If you need to know what it jumps, buy a horse that has already jumped it and accept the price. If you can carry uncertainty, a young horse is far better value.

When you need it going. A three year old is not a next season answer, whatever anybody tells you.

What you will not compromise. Temperament, height, age, sex. Say it out loud, because it is what protects you when you fall for something.

What "rideability" really means

It is the most used and least defined word in horse advertising. Ours means four specific things, and it is worth asking any seller to be this specific:

• It responds to the aid you gave, not the one you gave a moment ago
• It offers to work rather than needing to be persuaded
• It learns, so that the third attempt is better than the first
• It behaves the same in a strange arena as at home

The last one is the one that separates horses, and the one least visible in a video shot at the seller''s yard.

Questions to ask before you travel

Travel is expensive and a wasted viewing sours everyone. Ask these first, and pay attention to how readily they are answered rather than only to the answers:

What has been done to it, and what has not? A straight seller will tell you it has never been loose jumped, or has never left the yard, without being pushed.

Has it been vetted, and can I see the report? If the answer is no vetting, that is a legitimate answer for a young horse. If the answer is yes but the report is not available, be careful.

Is there anything a vet is likely to find? This is the question we most want to be asked, because volunteering an answer is the fastest way to establish whether a seller is straight. We publish minor veterinary findings on our own horse pages before anyone asks, including a mild upright hoof on one of our foals with our vet''s view attached. It costs nothing when it is explained and it costs a great deal when your vet finds it on the day.

Who has ridden it, and who produced it? With a young horse, the answer tells you what the horse has actually experienced, not what the pedigree suggests it might do.

Why is it available? Ask it directly. The answer, and the ease with which it comes, is more informative than most of what follows.

The viewing

Get there early enough to watch the parts nobody choreographs.

Watch it caught in the field. How a horse behaves when a person walks towards it with a headcollar tells you more about temperament than an hour of ridden work.

Watch it tacked up. Ear shyness, girthiness and general opinion all surface here.

Have the seller ride it first. Not because you cannot ride, but because you learn what the horse looks like when it is going well before you affect it.

Then ride it yourself, badly. Ask it a question slightly wrong on purpose and see what it does with the mistake. A generous horse forgives you. That quality is worth more to an amateur than scope.

Ask to see it the following week. A second viewing on a different day, ideally in different weather, is the single cheapest piece of due diligence available. A seller who resists it is telling you something.

Vetting

Use your own vet. Not the seller''s, and not one the seller recommends. This is not about suspicion, it is about who the vet''s duty is to.

Match the vetting to the purchase. A two stage on a foal is reasonable. A five stage with imaging on a horse you intend to compete is not optional at any serious price.

Ask about prognosis, not just findings. Most horses have something on X-ray. The question is what it means for the job you want, and only a vet who knows the intended use can answer that.

Do not treat a clean vetting as a guarantee. It is a snapshot of one day. It is risk management, not insurance.

Paperwork, and the bit people forget

Passport, vaccination record, and confirmation the microchip matches the passport. Registration papers if the studbook matters to you, which it does if you may breed from a mare later.

If the horse is crossing a border, the paperwork is the timeline. Export documentation, blood testing where required, and transport booking all run to fixed schedules that do not care about your plans. Build in more time than you are told you need.

Red flags, ranked

In rough order of how seriously we would take them:

1. Resistance to your choice of vet. There is no innocent version of this.
2. Pressure to decide today. Genuine urgency exists and is explainable. Manufactured urgency is not.
3. A second viewing being difficult. See above.
4. The story changing. Age, history, what it has jumped, who produced it. Write down what you were told the first time.
5. No price until you state your budget. It is not always a bad sign, but you should notice it.
6. Everything being perfect. Every young horse has something. A seller with nothing to disclose is either lucky, incurious, or not telling you.

The uncomfortable question to ask yourself

Not "is this a good horse", but "is this a good horse for the person who will ride it".

Those come apart more often than buyers expect, and the gap is where most unhappy purchases live. A horse that is too good for its rider is as much of a mismatch as one that is not good enough, and considerably more expensive.

If you are unsure, say so to the seller. Any seller worth buying from would rather talk you out of the wrong horse than sell you it. We would, and we have.

If you want to see how we answer these

Every horse we sell is one we own and have produced ourselves, with a written assessment, the pedigree evidence behind it and any veterinary findings stated on the page. You can read the collection, the mares behind them, or tell us what you are looking for and we will tell you honestly whether we have it.