Oct 245 min read

THERE ARE GOOD DEALERS TOO ... AS WELL AS DODGY BUYERS

Updated: Oct 26

Dodgy dealers are big news on social media, and rightly so, but for every bad dealer there’s a great dealer who got into the business for all the right reasons – and many of them are having to put up with dodgy buyers.

Clare Cameron has been importing horses from Ireland to the UK for the past 15 years and she has built a trusted and enviable reputation in the process.

Her adverts are honest and the horses she sells are picked for their ease of handling and rideability, and that includes thoroughbreds.

A GOOD DEAL: Clare imports horses from Ireland

Even so, she faces a constant influx of “time wasters” who seem hell bent on trying her patience and taking up valuable hours of her day.

“A woman recently got in touch wanting a nice, big, safe, bombproof horse, which I have,” Clare told MumsHaynet. “I've got a lovely, big, ex point-to-pointer who was trained on the beach.

"He's used to busy roads, he's in a busy family yard, and he's seen a lot of life because he's been point-to-pointing for the last five years. This horse was just what she wanted.”

Unwilling to buy unseen, Clare arranged for the woman to visit the yard in Ireland, sorting out her transport from the airport, helping her with car hire, accommodation, and arranging anything else she needed during her stay.

Although the woman couldn’t ride the horse on the premises for insurance reasons, she was permitted to take the horse outside of the yard and into the fields nearby. She then followed up the visit with a barrage of questions.

“I am not kidding, hundreds and hundreds of questions,” said Clare. “What size rug? When was he last shod? When was he last wormed? Could I get quotes for delivery, which I did. What time would the lorry deliver? She drove me absolutely nuts and for nothing.

“It absolutely ruined my whole weekend.”

While Clare admits she doesn’t get problem buyers with regard to payment, she says occasionally she gets blindsided by buyer behaviour post purchase.

“I had somebody buy a windsucker and when he arrived, she decided she didn't want him and was going to send him to the hounds because he was thin,” said Clare.

“I paid her all the money back for the horse and for the transport, and I had him transported up to me here in Scotland.

“He’s the sweetest, sweetest horse, and I've just managed to find him a home, but that was a really unpleasant situation.

“I had another where a woman got a horse with rain scald and she wanted her money back. It had been noted on the vetting, but it's not an unsoundness and it goes with treatment.

“It was unfortunate, but this year a lot of horses have had rain rash because of the weather.

“The Irish don't tend to have the tradition of rugging them up in the spring because it's mild and the rugs would be on and off.

“So, there was a lot of rain rash around this year, and while most people just treat it, this particular woman refused to keep the horse and threatened legal action.

“Then there are people who come with a sob story, saying they haven't got any money, and I have to tell them we're not a charity.

“Quite often we go through the whole process of finding out about the horse, asking all the questions, getting all the videos, discussing where it would go, and then they say they don't have any money or ask whether I would consider a payment plan, when my adverts clearly state there are no payment plans.

“And then we have the teenage dreamers, usually at the weekend. If anybody is called Ella May, or Georgia May, or Lacey, or Chelsea, they usually fall into this category – pretending to buy when the reality is they haven’t the money.”

Of course, for every time waster, Clare has a list of genuine buyers who liked what they saw and gave a horse a loving home.

“I still get photos from buyers of the horses they bought from me right at the start,” says Clare, and the pride in her voice comes not from a successful sale, but from knowing that she has made a difference.

Philanthropic by nature – she has set up a small fundraising initiative to help needy families in Peshawar in north west Pakistan – Clare first began dealing in horses in 2011 when the Irish economy crashed.

Nicknamed the Celtic Tiger during the boom years, the Irish economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.4% between 1995 and 2000, and between 1987 and 2007 Ireland's GDP grew by 229%.

Then the global crisis hit and the bubble burst. Foreign finance dried up, exports tanked, construction came to a halt and property values plunged, exposing the toxic debt at the heart of Irish banks.

“People had overstretched themselves,” says Clare. “They had built all these fancy houses. They had stables full of horses. They were hunting three times a week. And they literally went from that to nothing.

“So, between 2011 and 2012, some 28,000 Irish riding horses went to kill pens.

“These were not typical knacker-man horses; these were proper horses. That’s also when the Lasagna Gate scandal broke because there was just so much horsemeat flooding the market.”

Although Clare lives in Scotland, she has family in Ireland. Her cousin was the field master of the North Tipperary hunt at that time. As fate would have it, by 2011 their elderly aunt was also struggling with her collection of sports horses on her estate in Lockerbie, so a plan was hatched to sell the sports horses in Ireland, where they were still a commodity, and bring rider-friendly horses from Ireland to the UK.

“Every week, my cousin brought a lorry load from the killing pens in Cork,” said Clare. “And we sold them very quickly because people loved them.

“At first, it was the Irish draughts, connemaras, and cobs. We didn't really think of thoroughbreds as we were specifically looking for easy horses that were good to handle and hack and ride in general.

“But then I was introduced to someone who gets a lot of thoroughbreds and I started rehoming them for him because I realised that actually they have nowhere to go in Ireland.

“Really, they have nowhere to go and now they have closed the slaughterhouse following a TV expose, the only place left for them is the meat lorry.”

Without going into too much detail because she finds it distressing, Clare said many of Ireland’s unwanted ex-racehorses find themselves packed onto lorries, often heading to a brutal end.

“That is literally the only place for these thoroughbreds to go, especially the older ones,” she explained.

“People take them to the sales and the only people really buying thoroughbreds at the sales are the meat men.

“Even if they've done a good job after racing, people don't care.

“My friend went to sale, and he said there was a nice thoroughbred there, only 12 years old, belonging to two teenage girls. They had done everything with him – eventing, hunting, Pony Club, everything – and they were now going to university.

“So, he went to the ring at €800 and he didn’t sell. They then went outside. The meat man was there and he gave them €1,000 cash. They handed over his passport and walked off. They didn't even look back to say goodbye, and they knew the horse was going on the meat lorry.”

Currently, Clare is bringing 10 horses a week from Ireland – including thoroughbreds specially picked for the sanity and sweet nature. And though she is only a year shy of her seventieth birthday, she says she has no plans to retire as of yet.

“If I don’t help these horses find homes, who will do it?” she asks. “What will happen to all those horses that deserve a second chance?

“I'm a natural rescuer, I'm just one of those people, and I will continue doing what I can do until I can no longer do it.”