1 Diego: Finding a horse in France a nightmare: Why I almost gave up until I found Diego Dream horse

Why I almost gave up finding a horse… until Diego appeared

Do you want to know why I almost gave up looking for a riding horse… and how Diego suddenly showed up out of nowhere? In this vlog, you’ll see months of frustration, setbacks, and tough decisions turn into an unexpected dream horse adventure.
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Shortly after our move from Combette to MaquÉden, Callas became lame due to an incident with the neighbors, in which she got caught in the electric tape fence and tore a tendon. When she still hadn’t recovered after two years, Prisca moved in as a new riding horse. Unfortunately, Prisca has stomach ulcers, and our hilly terrain didn’t help. I felt it would be too cruel to ride a horse with ulcers, as it caused her pain.

After much consideration, I began looking in summer 2025 for another riding horse. I have been searching since September and have tried a lot of horses. Often they had very strong mouths or refused to give their feet; on another, I couldn’t sit comfortably — there was always some issue.

I gave up because, apparently, in the price range I was looking at, around €3,000, you can no longer find a well-trained, bomb-proof horse.

At the very beginning of my search, I had seen a Comtois draft horse, well above my budget, but I thought it was worth trying to negotiate, so I emailed them — never received a reply.

So after all the failures and thousands of km travelling to try horses, I then thought, if I have to buy a horse for around €6,000 anyway, I might as well go on a riding school trail ride every other week and enjoy ten years of outside riding for that budget.

And just when I said that out loud, I finally got a reply to that ad I applied to. I was able to come and see him. Diego turned out to be enormous, but absolutely stunning if you like draft horses.

What made it even more special is that in the city I most love in France, the medieval part of Carcassonne, which is on the UNESCO list, carriages were pulled by Comtois horses. I thought it was very special to have such a horse, and generally, draft horses that are used to crowds are quite bomb-proof.

That company had to close, and all horses that did not retire with them were sold. One of those horses was Diego.

I groomed him, walked him, lunged him, rode him, he has a soft mouth and did some desensitization work. A surprising setback: Diego had not been ridden for five years. Yet he adapted very well and ticked all my boxes — more than any of the other horses I had tried. I decided that if the veterinarian approved him, I would buy him and start a new adventure with him!
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If you’d like to follow this new adventure with Diego and see how our journey continues, make sure to subscribe to my channel. That way you won’t miss any updates, training progress, or future rides. Thank you for watching, and I hope to see you in the next video.

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