Cash-Strapped Equestrians Are Finding It Difficult to Hold Onto Their Horses

Sharon Green still hopes that she won’t be able to sell Tally, the 6-year-old mare that was her “dream come true,” an animal she not only rides but kisses and cuddles.

Maybe no one will offer a reasonable price. Or the only potential buyer will look like a horse-beater. “I couldn’t possibly sell to anyone who’d mistreat her,” Green said.

“We’d have to keep her.”

After her husband learned that he was being laid off at Lockheed, however, it was hard to justify having a fancy horse like Tally, a Hanoverian warmblood. So the Sylmar couple has listed her for sale (“must sacrifice”) in the latest issue of the California Horsetrader.

“It’s like losing a child,” Green said. “But it’s a luxury . . . we just can’t afford.”

In these economic times, she’s not the only one.

Green’s niece, who lives in Palmdale, is selling her horse because a third child is on the way and her husband’s job, driving a cement truck, has been devastated by the construction slump. Another couple, friends of the Greens, are selling two horses to pay for a pickup to start a plumbing business.

Even so, they’re more fortunate than the two people who fell behind on board payments to keep their horses at Carousel Farms in Chatsworth and recently wound up having the animals foreclosed on and sold.

“I’ve been in business 16 years and I’ve never had to do this,” said Maryellen Kane, the owner of the stable. “It’s really sad.”

There are few hobbies as costly as horseback riding, especially if you own your own. Board at top stables around Los Angeles can run $400 a month. Even keeping horses in the back yard can mean hefty bills for feed, shoeing, vets and--for those who want to show the animals--training.

Although some equestrians fall within the upscale image of the sport, many are everyday working people.

Green’s niece, Kathy Richter, grew up in Colorado and competed in barrel races as a teen-ager. After high school, she moved to California “thinking I’d never own a horse.”

Several years later, however, she learned of a woman whose quarter horse had two foals. “I fell in love with this mare. . . . I spent until midnight convincing myself I shouldn’t do this.”

The next day, she put a down payment on chestnut-colored Cinder. She paid the rest on an installment plan, $100 a month.

“Cinder wasn’t very big then. She couldn’t even be ridden,” Richter said. “But I was single with no children. I was working two jobs and spending time with her. . . . I taught this mare everything she knows.”

Soon, Cinder would whinny whenever Richter showed up, which was often.

“Every time I’d have a problem, I’d go out and spend time with her, talk to her like my best friend. . . . Tell her what I felt. Hug her and cry.”

Now Cinder is 9 and Richter is 32, married with two children, pregnant again, working as a legal secretary while her husband hustles up cement truck jobs and teaches himself computers on the side.

Palmdale prices are lower than in Los Angeles, but it still costs $110 a month for a stall at a back-yard stable 10 minutes from the Richters’ apartment. With shoeing and shots, and “without any major problems,” Cinder costs $150 to $160 a month, Richter said.

“Now I’m looking at another child; the day-care bill is going to go up. . . . We have to get a bigger apartment.”

There’s no getting around it. She hopes to get $2,000 for the registered quarter horse.

“My 4-year-old says, ‘Mommy, I don’t want you to sell Cinder.’ And I say, ‘There’s got to be a way. . . . Maybe we can put it off a little longer.’ ”

In fact, long delays are the norm in today’s horse market, which is slower than even its real estate counterpart.

“There’s more people selling than there is buying,” said Ray Holgren, a horse trader based in Lake View Terrace.

Others tell of horses worth $5,000 two years ago now going for $500. And there are tales of abandoned animals that wind up at the proverbial glue or dog food factories.

For those who can’t fathom such a fate for their animals, an alternative is a “must sell” ad in publications such as the Horsetrader, which circulates throughout California.

“I think the horse industry, in general, is a strong industry. However, just as any other industry, they’re going over a jump, you might say,” said Warren Wilson, assistant publisher of the San Marcos-based publication.

Although the number of ads offering horses for sale has remained steady, Wilson said, there’s “an increase in the number of ‘must sells’ at the bottom of each classified.”

“But if experience says anything,” he added, someday “these people are going to be buying another horse--if not the same one--as soon as they can.”

Richter certainly fits that profile as she looks to sell Cinder.

“I would probably almost give her away to the right person,” she said, with one crucial condition:

“I’ve told them, if they take her . . I have to be able to come and see her.”

The Richters’ dream is to someday own a home with room for horses--much like her aunt’s place.

Sharon and Ron Green have almost an acre in Sylmar. There’s space for nine horses out back, but they have only three: a knock-about Morgan, a pony for her 9-year-old son and Tally, “as in ‘Tallyho.’ ”

Raised in Santa Monica, Sharon Green spent summers at a dude ranch and later moved on to the more-refined English-style riding. She aspired to compete in grueling three-day eventing, which includes jumping, cross-country and the dancelike discipline of dressage.

It takes a special breed of horse to be successful, however, and she could hardly believe it when Ron suggested three years ago that they buy one. A former rodeo roper, he--unlike many “horse widower” husbands--clearly understood her passion.

“He asked my trainer, ‘What will it take for her to advance?’ ” she recalled.

“And she said, ‘a warmblood,’ ” a type of horse originally bred in Europe to be powerful yet calm in warfare.

They found Tally at a breeding ranch north of Sacramento. Although the young animal still “acted like a 2-year-old who has a temper tantrum now and then,” riding her was “like driving a Ferrari,” Sharon said. In addition, “she loves to snuggle.”

They bought her for $8,000 and began the tedious training process, which takes years.

Shortly before Christmas, however, the Greens got a double jolt.

On Dec. 4, Ron, 49, learned that he would be among the tens of thousands of casualties in California’s ailing aerospace industry. His layoff at Lockheed, where he had worked as a truck driver for 25 years, at first was scheduled six weeks before he was eligible for 80% retirement.

“After a lot of breath-holding, they finally said ‘OK,’ ” Sharon said. He could stay long enough to get his retirement.

On Dec. 18, Sharon and another clerk got the news from the accounting firm where they worked: “They just said it was my last day.” The firm’s expansion plans hadn’t worked out.

The Greens have given up on big city life.

Ron’s last day at Lockheed is March 13. They plan to move to Arkansas, where his parents live. They’ve already bought a ranch.

Sharon rattles off the particulars: “Three bedrooms, two baths, two barns, three chicken houses, a year-round stream and two ponds, stocked.” In all, 98 acres, with pasture for 80 cattle. “And we got it for $75,000,” she said.

Before they go, they have to sell the house in Sylmar. They figure that they might have gotten $350,000 for it in 1989. Now, maybe $240,000.

Then there’s the matter of the horses.

They can use the Morgan and the pony on the ranch. “We’ll round up the cattle,” Sharon said. “Just like ‘City Slickers.’ ”

But Tally would be out of place. To keep the Hanoverian warmblood in training, they’d have to trailer her two hours away--hardly feasible on their new budget.

The horse trailer is for sale now as well.

“I keep telling my husband, ‘I don’t want to sell her. Please.’ But I know it wouldn’t be fair to keep her on a backwoods farm,” Sharon said.

“I’m just asking what I paid for her,” she said. “What I’m more hoping for is someone who will love her . . . someone who’s a good rider and actively working with a trainer so she can do what she was meant to do.

“Of course,” she added, “I have these visions of myself going cross-country, over the hedges. . . .

“I’m still secretly hoping I can’t sell her and my husband says, ‘OK. We’ll take her. Load ‘er up. How much could it cost to feed a horse in Arkansas?’ ”