As with nearly every business, the horse business has its ups and downs. If you are in the business of raising and/or selling them, awhile back we were in one of the industry’s little “valleys.”

Since other business people have to deal with this same situation I began looking around for ideas we might be able to apply to our circumstances. The first tactic I noticed was in a furniture ad. “Buy now,” the ad said, “Make no payments until 2009.” The idea, of course, is to apply to the “right now” way people seem to think and live. Just put your trouble off for two years. Maybe a miracle will happen between now and then. Could this work at a horse sale?

“OK folks,” the auctioneer announces. “Today we’re selling the Crooked Branch Quarter Horses. Buy ‘em today but don’t pay for two years. As long as you feed ‘em, we don’t care. Just get your hands up and let’s have an auction.”

Before the sale the owners had explained to him it usually takes two years to collect on a few of the buyers checks they get after the sale, anyway. Point two, as long as the horses are being fed, what the heck. Why not? Two years’ feed costs more than some horses are worth right now anyway. Just sign on the dotted line and haul them home.

A good friend of mine has a Western Store that has made a boot sale famous. “Buy one pair at full price, get a second pair, same or lesser value at half price.” If it sells boots, why not horses? The obvious would be to simply sell a buyer one horse, then let him pick out another you don’t like anyway and sell it for half the price of a good one. Here, however, is where I get some good out of those four years spent in an institution of higher education. It’s supposed to have made me really smart, you see. Why not apply the buy one, etc., policy to pregnant mares? You don’t even have to furnish a second halter to get the half price one loaded. My Mother would be so proud of me for thinking of that one.

The possibilities are endless. Best of all we in the horse business won’t have to do anything except sit back and watch TV commercials. Let those guys figure out the idea. We just copy them.

Brilliant, huh?