Struggling with My First Arena Ride of the Season

Struggling with My First Arena Ride of the Season

The days are short, and by the time I get to the barn, I only have a few minutes of daylight. I have been going on mini trail rides and finishing up my ride outside doing laps on the little track we have, but the other night was rainy. I was thwarted. With much reluctance, I entered the indoor arena.

Just a reminder for my readers—I had issues with Cole in the arena in the early days. He would get to the far corner and try to bolt back to the front of the arena. He did this enough in the first few weeks that I became afraid to ride over there. I would just ride circles on the safe half. This lasted a really long time, but I got over it. Nowadays, he seldom tries that trick—but when I haven’t been in the arena for a while, my old fears show up.

I started out working in his better-behaved direction. After a few minutes, we started walking laps. When I felt good with that, I would trot a little and ask him to stop before he got too close to the far end. Each time we did it, I got a little closer. Within 10 minutes, I was trotting full laps. He was doing his big show trot which is hard to post and hard to sit. I started out with posting and once I got used to it, (he seldom does it on the trail,) I began to sit the trot.

Now, it was time to try the other direction. This direction is more complicated because he likes to take off along the wall to get to the far corner. At the next corner, I have had trouble with him wanting to run down to the wall to get to our barn door which is just off the normal oval we ride at the corner. I began with the walking, again.

When it was time to trot, my nerves got the better of me. I decided to trot on the safe half. More than once, when he saw that far corner, he tried to go straight instead of circle to the center of the arena. I struggled to get him to continue with the circle. Great—he justified my fear of him bolting to the corner. I really hoped he had forgotten this behavior. To prevent it, I overcompensated by bending him too much on the circle and he began to lean. Neither one of us liked that—and finally he voiced his protest by having a temper tantrum when he saw that far corner—bucking and trying to get away. I quickly spun him into the wall and made some small circles until I felt he was under control, again. Now, I really didn’t trust him.

I went back to walking laps. I did some short trot spurts and practiced stopping. He started to get better. When I tried to take him down the wall that leads to our barn door, he braced himself to go straight to the door—rather than turn along the track. I ended up spinning him again. I went back to rotting circles on the safe end, again. He kept trying to get either to the far end or our barn door. When I could keep him from overbending, I could feel my old Cole from last year return to me.

A friend showed up, and we started to talk as I rode. We seemed to relax, then, and I started getting good circles without fighting. It was getting close to an hour of riding, so then I just went and walked the hard direction. At least I was no longer afraid when I reached the far end.

I know it will get better—and probably just in a few rides. I had to contend with my nerves, re-familiarizing myself with his big show trot while he was getting used to working in a manner that he hasn’t worked in since back in March. The challenges did make the ride much more entertaining and the time went fast. We never even got to work on our laterals.