Rowland Fernyhough: ‘Selling a horse may soon become impossible’

Former international showjumper Rowland Fernyhough, who represented Britain on Nations Cups and at the Olympics, is now well known as a producer and now buys and sells competition horses. He shares his thoughts on pre-purchase vettings.

The process of modern vettings is becoming so unreasonable that we will soon reach the point where it is near-impossible to sell a horse. The odds have become so heavily stacked against the vendor that I think we should be charging purchasers a £250 fee to present a horse for a vetting, to cover the use of staff time.

Once, this would have been built into the selling price, but the chances of a horse failing the vet have become very high, when they used to be very low. There’s also no consistency. One vet fails a horse and then another passes it the next day or the next week.

Some of the horses I sold in the 1970s, 80s and 90s would probably fail a modern vetting, but in all these years I have never faced litigation from a purchaser or had any backlash over a horse sale.

The problem we now face is that, for anyone wishing to insure a horse, there are four parties who need satisfying by the pre-purchase vetting: the vendor, the purchaser, the vet and finally the insurance company – yet it’s the insurance companies who seem to set the criteria.

The full picture?

It has become the norm for up to 60 X-rays to be taken – and it can be the same X-rays whether it’s a £1m horse or one worth £10,000 – which takes up several hours of a working day.

Many years ago, we had a well-respected vet come to my yard to vet a horse and he had a student with him. I overheard him say to the student that it’s as important to vet the person selling the horse as the horse itself. That vetting only took 45 minutes.

If I’m not able to tell if a horse I am selling is clinically sound, I shouldn’t be doing this job, but common sense has gone out of the game.

Hours of X-rays aren’t just a problem for sellers, they are expensive for purchasers. We regularly see buyers who have spent £10,000 on three or four consecutive failed examinations.

X-rays were once used only if the vet was suspicious of something on the clinical exam. Now, no matter how sound a horse is clinically, it’s the scans and X-rays that hold sway.

Recognising risk

There are no guarantees with horses; a friend of mine spent £2,000 on a vetting and within a few months the horse was a total write-off.

All a vet can say is whether they believe a horse “might” have a problem in the future, and two vets can give differing opinions of the same thing, whether that be clinical or an X-ray. Some will consider it low risk, while some say high risk.

But as soon as the word “might” is involved, alarm bells ring with the insurance company and the purchaser gets nervous.

Vets seem to be terrified of being sued, and are trying to eliminate the risk, while the purchaser won’t buy the horse unless it’s able to be covered comprehensively by the insurance.

The only winners here, it appears to me, are the insurance companies.

I was educated by dealers in Ireland and they would say that when people buy a horse, they must realise that they are writing that money off. It’s like going on a holiday – you don’t take your holiday and then want the money back.

We’re living in a blame culture – which has been influenced by the American market – and it’s a difficult climate for vendors.

What’s changed is that it’s no longer accepted that buying horses has always come with an element of risk.

● Tell us about your experiences of the vetting process by writing to us at hhletters@futurenet.com, including your name, nearest town and country, for the chance for your letter to appear in a forthcoming issue of the magazine

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