How did your Million Dollar Dressage Horse do in the Olympics this week.

[onehandle]

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	I don't have one.
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	Kicked the Romney's Horses' Ass! Pass the Caviar!
	0 (0%)
	'He lost...I sold him for dog food' (as suggested by rfranklin down below)
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[rfranklin]

1. He lost...I sold him for dog food...

The Chinese badminton team is looking worried.

[MADem]

2. I voted PASS THE CAVIAR!!

Of course, I'm in complete fantasy-land, here, now!

I have as much chance of owning a dancing horse as Mitt has of entering the White House on anything other than the Park Service tour!!!

[Synicus Maximus]

3. You do realize that there is no such thing as a million dollar dressage horse, right?

Most Dressage horses are less than $25,000, cheaper than a bass boat, and even the most expensive seldom cost over $100,000.

[onehandle]

4. Including training, maintenance, and transportation it can cost millions.

Hardly comparable to a bass boat.

And they can be up to 250k.
______________

How much does it cost?

There is a wide range in price for the horses, but they start at about $5,000. The upper end of the range is difficult to pinpoint, but the best-trained horses regularly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and even seven figures. One dressage website describes the upper limit as “$250,000 to if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it.” But there are added expenses associated with dressage, like boarding and training. The costs of exhibiting a horse on the international circuit can easily hit $200,000 per year. Romney and Ebeling reportedly bought horses when they were young, opting to do the training themselves, which made it less expensive. Still, one horse that Romney bought in 2003 cost roughly $100,000.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/18/ann-romney-s-horse-goes-to-the-olympics-6-key-facts-about-the-sport-of-dressage.html

[magical thyme]

5. that's not entirely correct

The fact is that the price for a dressage horse, from untrained to fully trained, runs the gamut from free to over a million. Grand Prix schoolmasters still go for around $100K, at least the last time I checked the ads.

Debbie McDonald's follow-on to Brentina was Fight Club (renamed Felix) who sold at auction for over $1M. That was as for a barely started 4 year old at the big annual elite hanoverian auction in Germany.

Fully trained Olympic caliber dressage horses do not generally come cheap. And taking a youngster all the way through to GP does not come cheap, even if you are able to do all the training yourself.

Assuming they bought Rafalca as a 4 year old, they will have invested 11 years into her care, training and competition. Excluding her initial purchase price, her expenses will have reached $1M easily.

[KamaAina]

6. Dog food

he just couldn't get it done in piaffing.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. We had some trouble with his saddle...