Schooling Exercises for 4yo - any ideas?

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saskia295

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As we are still stuck in the dark any time after about 4.45pm (it is getting later... just about!), through the winter months I have no option other than to school my horse in the floodlit arena during the working week. However, this has been for a few months now and we are finding it quite hard to stay interested in our schooling.

I imagine there are quite a few of us in this position so I just wondered if anyone has any ideas as to good schooling exercises that I could try to try to keep us both entertained, interested and motivated?!

Any ideas would be very welcomed, thanks
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I use lots of poles, to circle round, ride through, make transitions between etc, as well as trotting and cantering over. How's yours going?
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Well seeing as he/she is only 4, I don't think its necessarily essential for the horse to be ridden every day (depending on the horse, of course.) Can you hack during the weekends? A couple of school sessions a week, a couple of hacks, and a lil bit of jumping under the lights (?) should, I would have thought, provide nice variation each week. Have you thought about lunging too?
 
1. polework with raised trotting poles or spaced randomly canter poles.
2. lunging
3. pick something you haven't tried yet, and try to improve it over the course of a week eg legyield orlots of walk/trot trans on a circle. Get a friend to watch at the weekend for a few min to gauge the improvement.
4. Learn a prelim test, and mark out an arena. Aiming to improve accuracy. I did this one as our arena is 30x45 and it was too easy to drift around then when we did go out to do a test the arena seemed tiny and all corners.
5. Join a local riding club and take advantage of cheaper lessons and low key SJ and dressage comps.
Good luck.

Fiona
 
Thanks everybody, all very useful.

AmyMay - I'd not thought of that one. We have a few clinics coming up so can't really turn away right now, but I may lessen his workload.

EJ - he's going well thanks, flatwork is great, don't think xc will be a problem, but SJ seems to be our achilles heel at the moment! It's almost like if they're lower, he can't be bothered and doesn't respect them so crashes on through but if we put them up, he'll clear them by about a foot. Funny little things aren't they?! How are you getting on?

Tomo_woo - thanks for your ideas. I school after work Mon, Wed and Fri and then hack on Sunday with a lesson every other Saturday (on the Saturdays I don't have a lesson, I hack out). It's just trying to keep him interested in the week that's the problem I think. I could take a day out so he's ridden 4 times a week, although he's the type that needs and likes his work, but at the same time, I don'tr want to bore him. Such a fine line, it's a toughy. Do you jump under lights? I've always been a bit dubious because I wasn't sure if they could see properly so would love to know other people's experiences of this or whether I've got this random thought from somewhere?!

Fiona - good idea about the prelim tests, hadn't thought of that one. Will def give the polework a go too. We recently had a new surface put down in the arena so we're not allowed to lunge now (I don't get it personally as we're allowed to jump
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) but I think they are getting a lunging pen built for this so think it is only in the short term. Before that, I used to put him in the pessoa once a week which I think he really benefitted from so it's a shame we can't do that now
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Oh well, not for long I hope.

Roll on Spring so we can all ride out in the light after work!!

Thanks so much everybody for all your suggestions
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