arena usage

diggerbez

diggerbez

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just wondering how use of the arena is regulated on your yards? on my current yard there are about 40 horses and 1 20x40m school. you have to book in the diary whenever you want to use the arena and booking is in half hour slots. are allowed to book 1 hour for lessons or getting jumps out but preferably not at peak times. thing is its a bit ridiculous as:

a) people can surely share? you are supposed to write 'share' next to your name if you are willing to, hardly anyone does this.
b) half an hour is a stupid length of time. frequently i might need 40-45 minutes
c) some people book it the same time every night and do this 4 weeks in advance so its really hard to get a slot. i went to book in for next thursday (as i'm going away and wanted to do it before i forgot) and it was booked solid 3pm-8.30pm already!

love the yard and people generally but feels like people are being overly selfish/stupid....
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we are bless. Yard of 13. schoolis booked for lessons/saddle fitter/chiro only and otherwise we share. simple as.
Your sounds like a nightmare.. 1 20x40 for 40 horses is rediculous!

Lou x
 
We dont have that many on our yard...but 3 or 4 of us can share at a time...at the end of the day if you have school etiquette and are continously looking out for each other it works well
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we are bless. Yard of 13. schoolis booked for lessons/saddle fitter/chiro only and otherwise we share. simple as.
Your sounds like a nightmare.. 1 20x40 for 40 horses is rediculous!

Lou x

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yeah...its a lot. but TBF not all horses go in the arena, some people are up in the day and some people have more than one horse so can't ride them all at the same time. i just can't help but think if people were a little fairer then it would work fine- to me i think bookings should be limited to 3 sessions a week during peak times (say 4pm-7pm?) and that there could be a minimum of 2 people in there at any one time? you don't need a whole arena to yourself (and this is me saying it who has a 4 year old that gets nervous and leaps about if someone comes towards him
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Nailed my yard sounds V similar to yours, 13 horses (only 8 owners) and 1 20x40 menage. However only 4 or 5 of the owners ever actually use the school as some horses are retired or just not ridden. We have to write on the notice board and check with YO to book school for a lesson ect but other than that we share. There's never more than 2 of us who want to use it at the same time on a day-to-day basis so it's not a problem but 40 people sharing one school must be hell! All our horses get on well so we don't mind riding together, it's actually quite nice sometimes x
 
We only had about 20 horses but used to allow everyone to nominate 1 x 1hr slot (maybe need to be 45 mins) once a week when they were guaranteed to get school, maybe for a lesson or something. Put down 3 preferred choices, and if there was competition for a certain slot draw it out of a hat.

Aside from this there was a board for booking school time, but at least everyone had a guarantee of getting a 'prime' slot - and if they weren't in the school by 10 mins after their slot started it was free for anyone else to use.

But think for 40 horses one school is really insufficient, i'd start looking for a better yard.
 
oh no trust me i LOVE the yard. those who have followed my posts for a while will realise that this is really a minor issue compared to the crap i had to deal with on my old yard which had less people and a mahoosive school...the YO is building a lunge pen so hopefully that will help....
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There are 10 horses and 2 schools. If you have a lesson you write it in the diary and specify if it is the long arena or smaller one. There is always one available for use.
 
We dont book at all, you just goes in as when, if someone is in allready you just ask if you can join them, never been a problem to date.
We had to book at old yard which sometimes caused problems as you would book, and then some person from another yard who was a "friend" of the yard owner would demand to come in a she had a lesson with some up their own arse instructer, annoying that she didnt bother to put it in "our" book, it never caused me any problem but it did a couple of times for others.
 
I used to have a similar situation at my old yard. Fortunately the YO stepped in and that, although we had to book the school to show when it was being used, you had to share unless you were riding a young horse in the early stages of breaking or had a lesson. It was first come, first served for bookings and you were asked not to book the school up for weeks in advance. You got to know the other liveries and who was around the same time as you and tended to work things out between you.
 
We have a 20x60 school and about 15 riders. We have a board where you can "book" the school, but yard rule is that unless really necessary, please share! Recently a lot of folk have been lunging and it's been causing a bit of an issue as there's a lot of us feel it's impossible to school properly while someone is in lunging. Plus I don't feel it's very safe! People are also requested not to hog the same sessions on a daily basis to make it fairer and we can only book a week in advance. Works well 90% of the time!
 
see i have no problem with people lungeing when i ride as i think they can go in the middle and you can ride round them...but some on our yard don't agree. have to say if push comes to shove then riding should take precedence. am hoping my YO builds this lungeing pen quickly as think that will take a lot of pressure away...
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There are only 10 horses at my yard and 1 20x40 school, we only book the school if we are having a lesson and we write it up on the whiteboard. Other than that we share, obviously not a great problem with only 10 horses.

We do have 1 rule and that is you can't have 1 horse being ridden and 1 lunged at the same time, this is because there isn't really room.
 
That sounds a really unfair system. Especially letting people book up to 4 weeks in advance. Can you not come up with a fairer system and present it to your YO?
 
We have 10 horses and 1 20x40 school but only about 6 or 7 of us use the school,the others just hack. We don't book and sometimes share the school but as we're all up there at different times in the week there's rarely more than one of us in there. We make a note of any lessons on the blackboard in the tackroom, but don't book as such. I don't even mind if people come in when I'm having a lesson as long as they're aware that I won't have so much control over where I'm working and keep out of my way. We often lunge two in there, one at either end of the school.
 
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That sounds a really unfair system. Especially letting people book up to 4 weeks in advance. Can you not come up with a fairer system and present it to your YO?

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its worse than that- you can book 4 months in advance if you want. some people already have their names down for the 6.30pm slots in november. its manic!
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There's 18 stables on our yard, but in practice only 10/11 use the school. There is a book to book the school, but people only tend to if they have a lesson. If I plan on lungeing because I know I'll be short of time then I'll write in the book that I'm lungeing but happy to share if people are prepared to, and I never lunge in a peak slot. Generally though we all share the school, last night I rode with two others and it was really nice.
 
That's ridiculous, and surely you're not the only one to be affected by it - can't you talk to your YO? It just doesn't make sense to me
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I am very lucky in that my current yard has two 20x60 arenas, one indoor and one outdoor, and only 3 or 4 riders at a time, so often I am on my own or with one other rider. There is also a separate lunging area, which is nice as nobody really wants horses going crazy on the lunge when riding!

Conversely, my old yard was much bigger (40+ horses) and only had one big outdoor arena and one 20x50 indoor, and at times it could get quite crowded in the winter when nobody wanted to use the outdoor. However, I always tried to look for the positive side and felt that it was good experience to ride with 5 or 6 other people! After all, if you go competing you're bound to share the warm-up arena with a similar number of other riders, so it does make sense to be used to ride with others every now and then
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One outdoor arena with floodlights. It can only be booked for qualified instructors and we write on the blackboard so everyone knows.

Other than that its up to us....people often share the arena to school and lunge but if they have put jumps up we ask if we can join in or wait until they are finished......quite often we end up playing chase- me- charlie or setting up obstacle courses for the little ones.

Big rule is that all jumps/poles are put straight away when finished to allow for flat schooling and lunging.

We have off road hacking though so its not a problem if the arena is busy.
 
We have approx 35 horses and two schools, a 50x30 outdoor and 20x40 indoor.

Only the indoor is bookable, and thats only for lessons. The outdoor is to be shared.

There is a big yard near me (80 horses) which had two schools, and one of their rules is that while the indoor can be booked for lessons, no-one is allowed to book it privately between 5pm and 6pm weekday nights, and no one is allowed to book it privately at all on sundays. That means you know you'll be able to get in the school in the evening and will always be able to school at the weekend if you can't during the week.

Could you suggest something like that to your YO?
 
We're really lucky - really big outdoor arena, an indoor and a lunge pen for around a dozen or so liveries plus the YO and her husband.

No booking system and people often share, had 3 of us sharing a lesson and another livery interval training around the arena with no difficulties last night. YO does teach other people at times but is fine with us using the school at the same time as long as we stay out of the way of the lesson.

Even better is the fact we don't have to put the jumps away every time we use them!

Winter in the indoor school can be a bit trickier as it's smaller and some of us (me included!) aren't the best at looking where we're going!
 
Your yard would do my head in.

I'm on a large yard (numbers vary but 60-80 horses) of which I would say maybe 20-25 would use the school.

We have 1 school which is big 65x30 ish and a lunge pen.

There are no rules/restrictions on the use of the school other than not lunging in it. You cannot have sole use (even for lessons), so it is generally a free for all. To be honest there really aren't any issues though, on the whole you don't tend to get more than 3 people in there at one time and you just work around each other.
 
That does sound a bit much, it is easy to have 2 people in an arena that size so surely people who want to ride at peak hours or the same time every week could share? 2 at a time?

Ours is 24x45, with 2 liveries, and then me and B and V.... we don't mind sharing and riding together but the liveries don't like to share....
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