As someone who has owned a horse since I was 4 years old, and has helped others purchase horses, I have never bought a horse for me as an adult.  The last horse that was purchased for me was my grey AQHA mare “Juanasomesugar” when I was 11.  My family raised all of our personal show horses since purchasing Sugar.

It was pretty exciting to be buying a new horse for me.  I started by looking at reining AQHA and APHA horses.  There are a lot of nice ones out there in Canada and the USA.  I was hoping to find a top level paint reining prospect, if possible.  Reiners in Atlantic Canada have been bringing in some really top-self horses, though most of these are AQHA or solid APHA horses.

Anyone who has shopped for horses knows you can go crazy looking at all of the horses, bloodlines, and prices available.  The way to drive yourself completely over the bend is to not know exactly what you are looking for.  It takes a lot more honesty and soul searching then you would think!!  :-)  In the end, I asked myself the following questions:

1. What exactly is it you want to do with your new horse? (Work with a weanling or yearling to develop a finished reiner. Take my time, enjoy the training process)
2. What would my “ideal” new horse be able to accomplish?  (My new horse would need to have enough talent to walk into any reining ring I may want to show in.  Guess where my idea to make it to the world show came from….)
3. What would my maximum price range be? (And reasons why that is what I could/wanted to pay)
4. What is it I don’t want in a horse? (Difficult to train, not willing, not “pretty”)
5. If I was riding my “dream” horse, what would it look like? Lets face it, picking a horse based on colour versus talent is a silly idea, and I do like pretty much anything that is beautiful and built right.  That said, you gotta know what you like if you are lucky enough to find both.  (Tobiano stallion, not too much white, maybe a buckskin, bay, or dun.)

I decided that if I was going to bring something in from the USA that I wanted to bring in something a little bit different for this area.  Now I was in the market for a nicely marked tobaino APHA stallion and reining prospect who was either a yearling or foal of the current year.   The # 1 goal was to get  a good show horse for me, and # 2 was a good stallion prospect on top of that.  As I was looking for a future stallion prospect, homozygous stallions were my first choice.  However, homozygous and good bloodlines are not that easy to find in my price point.  I decided I would look at both heterozygous and homozygous APHA reining breed stallion prospects.   (Homozygous tobiano stallions will always produce paint colours babies when crossed with solid coloured mares.)

There are fewer “painted” paint reining prospects around then I thought there would be.  I started by looking at foals by “The Big Gun” and “Mark This Spot” as they are well known in the APHA and NRHA circles.  These studs have some beautiful babies on the ground, though not a lot with markings I was looking for in my desired age range.  I have to say, it is fantastic speaking with the owners of these great horses.  They were all very helpful during my search process.  Sadly the Haverty Ranch did not have any prospects that fit what I was looking for this summer.

I found “Gunning for the Big Time” and “The Big Dream” at Warren Performance Horses in Castle Rock, Colorado who really caught my interest.  I liked him enough that I decided get some more information on him.  At the same time, my Mother (Adrienne Smith) suggested I check out “A Tru Rolex” offspring.   This lead me to Joni Voloshin Performance Horses also located in Colorado, where I was really interested in a 5 week old grullo and a buckshin foal.  It seemed Colorado was the place to go to look at the most well breed paint reining prospects in the same place.

The next thing was to get my ducks in a row, and see if I could make it down to look at some pretty paint horses.   So my bags were packed, my vacation booked, my air miles cashed in, and I was more than ready to head west!