Things to do in a small arena...

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Tickles

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Now it is too dark to use the outdoor (not fenced from open fields/car park) arenas with spooky floodlit-produced shadows when we're alone I'm looking for new ideas to keep ourselves amused in the weekday evenings...

Setup: indoor arena, 15mx30m-ish?, bit dusty/v slightly deep (as well as small) for any fast work. We have one pole, two of those corner-shaped feed buckets and two milk crates to play with.

'We' are a clever 15.1 Arab and adult (but not too old for games) rider/lunger/whatever.

Thinking
- bending round buckets/crates
- transitions within paces, leg-yield in walk, turn on forehand
- some ground work...?
 
Why don't you do 'handy pony' stuff:
walking over tarpaulins
pop up tiny jump and cover it with towels and jump it
walking or trotting between things put close together
other scary / exciting things...

The other thing my instructor and I do when we are bored with schooling is formation riding. We come up with a little 'test' and then get the boys to go round it together, either side by side or single file. You can make it as complex or simple as you like. Ours involves 'moon walk' (rein back lol), leg yielding, shoulder-in. Yes, we are sad and have no life. The boys love it though.
grin.gif
 
i went somewhere years ago for a job interview, their indoor was that sort of size, i think they did full tests in there, then the horses got into a 20x40 for a test and thought "wow, tons of room..."!
leg yielding in and out on a circle, lateral work, transitions, everything except extended work i guess!
 
What about setting up some TREC obstacles - if you get the rulebook from the BHS they descirbe how to do them. Things like the S bend, canter corridor and rein back can be set up with a few poles or even just some lengths of wooden battoning you can buy cheaply in B&Q. Some people I know are quite snotty about TREC but a lot of the obstacles are quite testing.
 
you could try a gymkana type thing, weaving in and out of milk crates, picking up and putting things back into the bucket.. with plenty of tight turns and cantering.. used to love doing that with the loan pony!n x
 
I used to use an 18 x 35 for years with a horrid surface (dusty or deep/wet) - worked up to 1m15 SJ in there - arenas at shows seemed huge and horse was really nimble in JO's - still going strong at 20yo
 
Thank you all - I'm feeling refreshed already :-)

We could certainly do with a little de-spooking so I'll try some of those Flicker.

Annagain - I saw the celebrity TREC demo at Windsor in the summer. Thought it looked like heaps of fun - I'll have a look on the BHS website for the rules...

I've got a couple of little tests printed out somewhere Kerilli so I'll take one up and give it a shot.

And Violetstripe - the putting things in/out of places makes the weaving seem much more purposeful. We can practice our 'standing still for mouting' if I'm not flexible enough to reach to pick things up too!

Thank you!
 
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