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...