Nothing of actual value can be associated with a price tag. Anyone who hopes to make money off of preserving mustangs will be sorely disappointed.
Those who ask me about the "market value" of my horses are so alien to me that I cannot have a meaningful conversation with them. What is the market value of sunshine? Where can one go to get a good deal on having a life with meaning?
I have sold some horses and will continue to do so, but the horses that have the greatest value to me are the ones that I have given away. When I choose a person to receive one of the horses that I have raised that means that I value that person a great deal.
Crack cocaine sells for $20.00 per rock. Are my horses only worth as much as 1000 rocks of crack cocaine?
The spackling that fills in the cracks in shattered lives cannot be purchased.
That is the value of my horses.
In the past six months, I have seen show and jump trained thoroughbreds sell for tens of thousands...and I have seen horses of equal caliber (for lack of better language) given away for the price of the diesel to haul them home. A ridiculous equation.
ReplyDeleteCurrently a national show contender, awesome thoroughbred horse can be had here in Smithfiled for a pittance. (I know this horse, and while he will never live up to Holland or Baton Rouge, Red Feather, or Rico, he is a fine and gentle animal.) Ridiculous. Because it all happens for the wrong reason. Follow the money.
I would comment on the state of the mustang market, but there is no comparison, lovers of Spanish horses tend to have better sense than that.
Value. I am sorry, but it has nothing to do with money. Money is worshipped as a god, seems to take on a life and power of it's own. In all reality, it is only the medium of exchange based on society's agreement of what it is worth. No amount of money is worth the experience that I have had with these horses this year. No amount of money is worth the happines that watching our little riders train and ride these horses brings. Seeing Anne Katherine hyper focus on a horse in the pen. Joyah's stone poker face in lunging Baton Rouge. Seeing my wife get on Holland and go, then get back on him and go back in the woods after a fall...and ride him out through the same place she lost
it. Abigail and Rico. Chris and One Bull. Helping Tania and Karen get on a horse for the first time. The bubbling enthusiasm that Atilla brings to everything. I could go on all day. (Watching Rylee bail off her trotting horse and stuff a bit back in his mouth then jump back on without breaking stride, yeah, she did that.) The point is folks, great wealth is not found in your wallet. It is found in people, the land, living simply, of course horses fit in there. Great wealth is not what you have, but in who you love.
So, what is the value of a particular horse?
Priceless. A question begging term if ever I heard one.
What is the price of healing?
What is the cost of a childs sanity as they develop?
One cannot assign a material value to these things.
And no amount of money can bring these horse back when they are gone. Priceless.
Red Feather, in the pictue accompanying this post..if I owned him, I would not take a kingdom of gold for him. He is unique, a horse apart. But I would give him away if it meant that Abigail gets to train and ride Rico..
What's in your wallet? -Lloyd
Great post Steve - thanks for this!
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