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Sharing or loaning horses and ponies |
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There are three common scenarios where
people share the ownership of horses and ponies, or look for a horse or pony for loan.
Here are the current horse shares available. |
| Riding for pleasure top |
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Two riders get together to co-own a horse or pony which they ride for pleasure. This saves them a considerable amount of money. They usually keep the horse at a third party livery and ride the horse on alternate weeks. Alternatively one owner rides during the week and the other at weekends. If the horse is kept at livery, this is a straightforward arrangement and common across the country. If one of the owners stables the horse, then the owners need to agree the livery costs to be paid to this owner. The partners need to agree upon:
This kind of sharing is ideal for people who, for a variety of reasons, cannot devote the amount of time or money that the horse requires. Usually, the owner is still very much involved with their horse and it usually stays at the same yard. The owner and sharer share the responsibility of owning the horse and have agreed times when they will look after and ride the horse. Each sharing arrangement is different and designed to suit the needs of the horse and owner. Sometimes the owner requires a contribution towards the cost of keeping the horse, sometimes the share is set up on a 'work for rides' basis. In these cases, the sharer does stable chores such as mucking out and rides the horse in return. Templates contract for sharing horses are available here for both pleasure and competition. You are strongly advised to write down the agreement formally - horse and pony sharing agreements have tended to be recorded badly in the past and, as a result, have often ended in litigation. |
| Competition riding top |
| Joint ownership of a horse to enable competition
riding is also common. This applies at all levels of competition. Usually
the rider holds a small motivational share and the non-rider pays the
rest. Normally, the non-rider has the bigger share and pays all the bills.
The rider may pay some expenses or not. Often the horse has been trained
by the rider for a period, as their own, and there then comes a time when
it must either be sold at a good profit or taken further. The costs are
high and the rider often cannot afford to take all the risk themselves.
So they find a wealthy partner to buy the horse and allow them to continue
to train and ride it. This is common in dressage, eventing and show jumping
at all levels. All issues for riding for pleasure scenario above apply to competition riding, but there are a few additional upon which the partners need to agree:
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| Polo and race horses top |
| Polo and racing horses are a well established area
of shared ownership with many syndicates. There is good advice at the
British
Horseracing Board on setting up syndicates. |
| Version 1.0 December 2007 |
