Horse shopping in Hungary. Part 2.

For sale:

A gorgeous stallion especially trained for dressage.

Father: Olympic dressage horse Aktion.

Mother: Sandro hit and andalusian mix.

No papers but we can show you a photo of the chicken flock we got for exchange.

Price: A lot or more. Or a change to anything that does not bite or just gets up when asked.

A saddle. Kood kuality. Handmade from our neikhbours goat. Fresh. Komes with a hucul-pony.
Only used once.
Needs to be sold fast due to angry neikhbour.
Price: 1000 forints



A man. Aged 17 and half. Comes with some bad habits and needs re-schooling. Good duer.
Good moving with high knee-action. For good home only.
Price: Negotable.

Interested can take contact to: runasfastasucanorgiveusyourmoney@gipsieland.com

Horse shopping in Hungary.

Dear shopper,

If your horse shopping has always been just small arguments about the level of riding, colours of the bandages coming with the horse and few grammatic mistakes in the contract made by a professional laywer with specialisation to horse business, it is time to go to a higher level!

One of the highest levels for horse shopper is to buy a horse in Hungary. Be prepaired to drive hundrets of kilometers to see a gorgeous Aktion-foal with your stinky old lada. (That is to make sure the seller knows you are not rich and hopefully dont ask more than twice what the horse is worth...)
You wait for arriving to a modern stable with covered arena to be able to try this ridden amazing three year old who was so shiny and muscular in his photo that you could not sleep in few nights thinking of him. BUT you find the "stable" after several mistakes in the end of aweird village with no name. In a garden of a huge family house and in one second you are surrounded by millions and millions of gypsies.

In this kind of cases the horses are always fed with non-stop alfa-alfa grass and kilos and kilos of corn, so that they will walk out from the barn on two legs. There is always minimum two men going after them shouting and shaking plastic bottles with dried corn inside. The poor owner is hanging on the stallions headpiece with two hands, legs hardly touching the ground.

There is no inside riding hall, round pen or even field. This horse is not even the one you drove these kilometers to see. It is not grey like in his photo. It is not a foal from Aktion, but according to the owner "you just need to see how he is flying like an angel".Only thing you actually pay attention to while hiding behind the biggest mama to survive this show, is that his hoofs are painted with black paint. Matching the body colour...you see.

The wild youngster is taken to the main road of the village. The family and fifteen family's best friends with their familie's and their fifteen best friends (you get the picture) are running after the horse to "show his movements". The horse is nothing if his ears are not crossed, tail up on his back, blood ,fire, salive or small bats shooting out of his nosetrills and minimum four old women kicked to death during this show.

You are considered to be a total novice when you ask them to just let the horse to calm down to see his normal trot, wich actually seems to be quite promising. You are looked at with total attonishment the corn-bottle stopped in the air when you politely refuse to climb on this young horse to try how good it is to ride. For heavens name, he was ridden a lot as one and half year old by Janzsi-bazsi's one armed son from the next village! And he is fast, can also pull a carriage and is fat, what more do you want, woman?! (This is true about the horse and the son.)

You want to see the Aktion foal now when you drove all this way. Men are smiling, women are shaking their heads, you need to see all the twelve horses. They are all good. All the twelve? Yes, all the twelve horses and one uncle Ferenc's donkey. All of them tied side by side to a minimal barn, sized maximum 3 quaradmeters.
Then, if you have eaten ten cakes in the golden kitchen , you skinny, skinny girl, you get to see THE Aktion foal.

Several hours, horses and gipsies later, when the sun is down, shaking corn sounds hurting your head, THE Aktion foal is brought from the village near by. It is huge as a farm house, short cut hair, big stallion neck. You pull your husband out of the reach of his front legs wich keeps waiving in the air above all the gipsies. He has no bran marks anywhere on his body, put the owner remembers his breeding, for sure. It is even named after his olympic horse father...said the dealer who dropped it here four weeks ago for exchange of thirty chicken.

All kind of prices are flying in the air. Hitting the hands, shouting, laughing, dangerous jumping of the huge horse wich reminds you of the neighbours cold blood who came across you hours and hours ago. It even has the wooden pieces nailed to his front shoes like the working horses...

You start getting tired, your husband is drunk after all the Palinka. You start to be ready to buy what ever if they just let you go.

Now, here, dear horse shopper is your change. Either to buy one of the horses or run as fast as you can.
An advanced level horse shopper in Hungary leaves his lada running and runs away after seeing the first signs of rosted bits, huge leather boots, corn bottles and golden teeth.

A lesser experienced one should just back the less lame and crazy horse to your trailer and hope to sell it to abroad to get even half of your money back. Home you notice that he is not ridden, is ten years older than you were told, but knows how to sit and its all he is doing. Non-stop.

And all you really regret is that you did not buy the small old gipsy, third from the left without lower teeth. Boy, he really had the best extended trot, crossed ears and fire coming out of his nosetrills...

Shit happens.

But sometimes on the top of the shit pile there is a cherry:)

This time the cherry was called: pedal bone.

I never knew that rugs could be so dangerous. During all these years with horses, I have never been attacked by one, kicked, strangeled or even spitted at by one. ( To tell you the truth, drunken vet students are much more worse...)
I thought they were harmless, helpfull pieces of fabric with nice colours, soft in-side materials with outside suitable either for rain and snow or drying of the sweat. Coming in all new season colours, cross belts, leg straps, fixable locks, sizes from a small pony to an elephant. From cacao brown to light sweet green, shoulder flaps, tail sraps, thick good quality wool, three-point closing, high neck, sweat rug, turn-out rug, stable, travel, underwear, soft, warm, easy, long-lasting...




I admit that I have been kind of a rug-a-holic and carried for my horses every winter new ones. I mean, you get those so cheap in Finland, the land of a good rug-making.
No harm, so struggle.

My lovely four year old lipizzan stallion always thought different.

Őcsi was suspisious from the beginning. The first light weight cotton rug he put in order by pulling a piece off from it during the first cold Autumn nights. He never actually told me what really happened. It will always stay between him and the Evil Cotton Rug. But what is most important, they begun a very fragile friendship.
This weird friendship lasted untill the first rainy ice-cold days when the Awfull Rainblanket landed his blood-hungry paws on the Hungarian ground...

For Őcsi this cross belted dark blue monster was more difficult to win. It had three-point closure for better fit, the secret TPCFBF-code wich young horses learn about "How to kill your clothes"-evening school.
Őcsi took those blody things off with an extreme jump from full galopp to one shoulder. It hurt a bit but it was all worth it.

I still could not think that so harmless looking piece could really be so bad. I tied it on with some ropes, closed the cross belts "klick klick" and put the youngster to the windy cold winter.
What happened is a mystery, but it must have been a fight about life and dead. Only the neighbouring horses could witness these kun-fu jumps and bites. The Awfull Rainblanket lied dead cold in the rain when I came for my tired, but happy youngster.

Then came the day, what Őcsi had been scared of. The day when The Blanket won. The day when I learned that rugs really can hurt horses.

The heavy-weight, cotton-filled Ninja Thermo rug got an bite from my stallions tail, where it hang about ten minutes. I witnessed this unfair fight without being able to do nothing. It was all me to blame and I suffered to see Őcsi running in panick around the riding hall to get rid of the ugly thing.

At one point Őcsi tried his Triple- Karate-Kid-jump, (very close to the combined capriole plus buck practised by the disobedient Piber boys...you can have a curse on this in the third year of "How to make your owner mad"-school.). The jump failed due to the wrong position of the stars and he hit his hoof to the wall.

The rug gave up a bit later.



Őcsi was complete lame from right front.:(



Our veterinaries are Dr. Horvath and Dr. Simons from the Ullő large animal clinic. Thank you and sorry if I spelled your names wrongly.

X-rays showed a broken pedal bone. Medial side.

Now the cherry-thing is this tradegy is that if you should choose a bone to be broken in your horse, always go for the pedal. The prognosis is very good and horses suffering from this normally recover to full work in some (3-6) months. It needs stabilising the hoof and boxrest.
(The later will be veeery difficult for Őcsi cause he said he should meet James Bond and Superman at Batmans summer cottage next Wednesday at noon to share different methods fighting against the leg protections.)

We will get a cast over hoof, some new more precise x-rays and ice, acupuncture, laser, new diet, trick training against boredom, a lot of love and ..... I was thinking about a new rug....?


Tidudiii-tidudii-tidudii-tada. Tiu-iii, tiu-iii, tiu-ii, Tada. Music from the mission impossible. Everybody, sing together....
Ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta.....