I am so pleased with my new arena setup. You see, my arena has trolls down one side in the long grass, bears in the bush on the top side, shed monsters that bang around on that side - (dogs chasing rabbits, tin popping in the sun or chooks squawking up at the last minute) and on the paddock side are the remaining herd of jealous ponies that try to bite the ridden horse as I go past. So at any given moment one may find themselves on the opposite side of the arena with a buck & a fart thrown in. So my new setup means that both horse and rider have to stay totally focused, inside the arena. Its much harder to escape across the arena when there are obstacles everywhere and it will help conquer my fear of riding in an arena, with no defined path to follow. lol. Bunnings have 3m pine poles that are nice & smooth and machined so they are an even 100mm. So I bought 10 along with some undercoat. I could have left them plain but I decided that my life, especially my arena, needed brightening up so I asked on a local fb page for any bright or dark leftover paints & a lovely lady obliged. It may look like the poles etc are everywhere but it is very carefully planned. So in this picture, (you will need a computer to see it) I can do a 12m circle over the double black & yellow poles, then the outside black & green one then the timber raised single pole. I can do a 16m circle over the double timber poles, the outside green pole & the double pink & green poles. I can also ask for sideways in out out to incorporate ones from the other circle. Then I can still do a 22-23m circle around the outside of all the poles, inside the blue drums. I can still use the full outside of the arena without any poles and I can do 2 different sized rectangles with rounded corners (is there a name for that shape). I can do nice half circle serpentines down the middle line either between the poles or over them, incorporating the black small drum at one end and one of the orange bollards at the other end. I can use any of the poles for sidepassing in front of or with the pole underneath. The double poles can be used for backing up young horses to help with straightness. In the second pic you can see a bridge in one corner with a raised pole off it. My large circle goes inside of it or I can ride the boundary still outside of it. I have 2 barrels for a jump or a backing up squeeze test. Also 2 orange bollards from Masters for a gate obstacle or reversing figure 8s. In from another corner I have a drum with bags & other toys on it and in from another corner is a small jump. Oh, and the mounting block (half blue drum). The best part is that I can do ALL of that and am still able to use the centre lines of the arena for cloverleaf patterns etc without being hindered by a pole, and my arena is only quite small - 27m x 33m.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 13:15:23 +0000
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