Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Horse-Shopping Feeding Frenzy

So apparently I've discovered the secret to writing horse ads is to sound really, really desperate.

When I updated my ads recently, I didn't really change much of anything in the descriptions except to add an "Emergency Herd Reduction" statement at the top of each one.

I did this two days ago. Since then I have TEN different people interested in horses, including four who say they want to schedule a farm visit and one who has made an offer on Bonnie. Bonnie has become very popular. I have FIVE people interested in her.

This is so weird. I mean, I'm happy about it, of course, but where were all these people all spring, all summer, all fall, when they could have gotten a horse in time to do something with it while the weather was still good (and saved me from feeding them all for all these months)?

I've had more inquiries in the past two days than in the past 4 months combined.

Mystifying.

Still, it's good news, so I'm not going to complain. What I'm going to do is answer a lot of inquiry emails and phone calls and schedule a lot of farm visits. Which, with luck, will lead to selling a lot of horses and stopping some of the money that has been hemorrhaging out of this farm in the form of hay bills.

It will be nice to be able to pay all the people we owe money to. It will be nice to be able to sleep at night without having to lie awake wondering how to afford the next shipment of hay. It will be nice to have a shipment of hay last more than a week!

I just hope I am able to make the right judgments and find the RIGHT home for each of the sales horses. They're good girls, every last one of them, and they deserve good homes where they'll be loved and appreciated.