Horse Illustrated Magazine

You know it’s a crummy day for riding when I resort to amusing myself by trolling through Craigslist. Rarely am I surprised by what sort of horse-related stuff is being offered for sale in my region. Let’s start with the horse ads, shall we?

Forthright honesty is admirable in the horse world, but sometimes it’s best to choose your words carefully, lest you scare off potential buyers. For example, wouldn’t it have been better to describe an aged palomino as having some special needs instead of bluntly volunteering that he was “swaybacked since birth and blind in one eye”?

Next, I begin to wonder about a horse’s overall health and condition when the seller states (rather proudly, I might add): “He gets his hoofs trimmed every 3 months or so.”

Every three months… or so?! How about just going for it and getting them trimmed annually?

I also like the curious misspelling of words and the creation of new words. For instance, I clicked on an ad for a “small black gilling.” Turns out it was not a rare species of flounder but a small black GELDING.

A few inches below that was an ad for an AQHA sorrel with this cryptic notation: “7 years-old; he is famal.”

“Famal”? Hmmm… What did they really mean to say? Did they mean the horse was… familiar? With what? Cattle? Barking dogs? Is he familiar with the farrier? The vet? Or did they mean to write “he is family”? But is he family like my sweet Uncle Nate or family like my mean cousin Tommy?

Mixed among the listings are ads for horsey stuff. Some of it is understandable, like tack, stall mats and pipe corral panels. But two ad headings in particular caught my eye. One was for “old metal horse trots.” I tried desperately to figure that one out. Perhaps it was a declarative statement, like, “Hey, I have an old horse welded out of metal, and if you pull that little lever on the side, it trots.”

But no. When I clicked on the full ad there was a photo of a pile of crusty steel water troughs, the ones you put in a horse pasture: Old metal horse troughs. (Apparently the seller missed the phonics lesson dealing with the “f” sound at the end of that word).

The other bizarre horsey stuff ad was for an “adult rocking horse.” Right away I got this sort of creepy feeling that the ad wasn’t for a rocking horse in the image of an adult horse. I just knew it had to be a rocking horse made for an adult. Yuppers. I was right. And here it is:

I could almost hear the enthusiastic gushing of the seller as he/she boasted that the stout wooden horse was “crafted with perfection” and that it “will safely rock a 250-pound man.”

Why? Why would it do that? And what 250-pound man… Wait. What man of any size would feel an overwhelming compulsion to swing a leg over the back of a wooden rocking horse and go for a ride? Let’s all say it together: “Ewwww!”

Okay. That’s enough Craigslisting for today. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that the weather is better tomorrow so I can do something productive. Like ride a real horse.

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