Planning Arena Upgrades

I'm constantly thinking about my arena. My current arena at the ranch is about 15 years old. When it was built, we didn't really know what it'd be used for, but within a year or two after it was built, I was developing a Grand Prix horse in it. Then it sat for a number of years before I brought TC to the ranch and started riding in it for real again.

I've been back and forth whether to keep TC and my future horses at the ranch long term, but I think I've made the decision that he's there to stay for good, even if I daydream for boarding facilities where the arenas are big and rectangular and have square corners and are watered and dragged by someone else. I could see boarding a future horse out for a while, but I do think that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink a little effort into updating the ranch arena. 

More tractor work at home than at a boarding
facility, but at least it's fun!

My first task was to square off the arena as much as possible. It's kind of a wonky shape and as much as having a larger space would be great, having a predictable shape is honestly better for me. So I've been dragging it rectangular for a while, which is actually so convenient because it means I have a good spot for my Pivo, mounting block, to store my roller, and to have all my cavallettis. I've dragged it like this for months and I think am at the point where I'd be willing to move the fence in. 

The benefit of moving the fence in isn't just so that I have a rail on that one side to use. It also means that I can move the sprinklers over, get another sprinkler to have a better sprinkle pattern, drop the pipes under the ground so that they don't grow moss and make the sprinklers shitty, and I can also drop posts in locations where it'd be convenient to have them, such as at the quarter lines and where I could maybe set up letters for at least a short court. 

It's like the least rectangular thing, but you
can see where I could square it off

So that's the plan for this fall I think. My dad is confident that we can do it ourselves, which makes me nervous because I think he's where I get a lot of my "how hard could it really be" energy from. But my brother likes manual labor and I think he has some friends who could help too. 

I think I'll want to structure the existing weird corner as a storage area, put a gate there to easily bring the roller in, put in some pole storage so that I can bring jumps in and out, and I'll also have to figure out how my mounting block is going to work there too. 

We also get to redo my fencing, which has slowly been falling apart over the years. And I really want to figure out my Pivo situation. Like I'd LOVE to have a little dedicated Pivo spot where I can just bring the Pivo out on a small tripod or in a bag rather than on the giant tripod I have. 

Plus, in a perfect world, I'd love a speaker system where I can send music through bluetooth and be able to listen to music in my arena without using my headphones or playing it from my phone in my pocket. That feels like luxury and honestly may not be a thing. 

The now repaired corner

Once that gets all situated (hopefully this fall), I think the next big upgrade for the arena (next spring maybe) is going to be the footing and laser leveling the base. The arena slopes 2% diagonally toward the gate, which is why that spot suffered so much after years of storms. I repaired the base there and have felt comfortable riding in that corner, and now that we roll the arena during major storms, the water has been much easier to deal with. But it's still a 2% grade which is so much for an arena. 

The footing is also 15 years old, and while I have added sand here and there, it's got a lot of dust in it and so it sticks to my harrow and the footing isn't as good quality as it used to be. TC doesn't seem to mind, but if I'm going to be riding there for years to come, jumping on it again, maybe leasing something for the kids? I want better footing. Or at least sand with no dirt in it!

So I'm hoping to get a quote on what it'd take to scrape the existing footing, dump it onto my tracks, redo the base so that the repair is actually done properly, grate it so that it's crowned, or at least so that it's not a diagonal grade, and then add new footing and laser level it. 

He does love the ranch, and he loves
walking down the road to visit his
many animal friends

Hopefully I can make that happen next year! But honestly even just having a more consistent sprinkler situation inside an actually rectangular arena will be amazing. 

Ride, Drag, Roll, Repeat

We had a lot of rain on Thursday last week, 2.25 inches all on one day. It was our first large storm of the season, and another 2+ inches came in over the weekend. 

He misses the tracks and so do I

I'd mentioned a while back that my arena had been damaged by the rain. So I've become pretty obsessed with preparing it for each storm, and so far it's held up really well this winter! 

When I know that rain is coming, I'll make sure that all the drainage spots in the arena (where the water flows under the kick boards) are clear. It usually involves shoveling sand back into the arena and then shoveling some pathways away from the arena so that the water doesn't get stuck behind the kick boards and start traveling down to that corner rather than out of the arena. 

It's road walking season

Then I drag the arena "hamburger" style, so that any tractor marks that are left go across the arena toward the short side rather than down the arena (I guess "hotdog" style lol). Sometimes even after I roll it, water still finds the drag tracks to wander down. 

And finally, I roll the arena. I've been experimenting a bit with how much rolling is necessary. One pass seems to get 80% of the way there, so if it's a small storm, I stick with that. But for this large storm, the arena got two passes, and that was really great!

Not bad!

He was happy to go down the road

On Friday after that storm, I dragged the arena and it was super rideable!! Way improved from the maybe three days it used to take to recover from a storm like that. So I got TC out to work. 

Side note: he was really good! He actually did very well with his bit flexions that day, fighting me a lot less and doing a lot of releasing. And then the work in the arena was quite good. He seemed to be glad for some entertainment, since the horses get locked in from their pastures and just have access to their (quite large) paddocks. 

I was super impressed with how well the arena held up! Even if the weather changed over the course of the day and it turned out that literally on Saturday morning at 6am, we were set to get another storm. So I dragged the arena, rolled it, and shoveled the sand out from the drainage areas. 

Then on Saturday the weather changed AGAIN so it wasn't going to rain until 3pm. Because I'm so dedicated to this rehab, I trudged down there, dragged the arena, long lined him, then dragged again and sealed it back up. 

I don't mind the roads too much!

Finally Sunday it was too wet to want to work in it! So instead, we walked down the road. It was my first time riding him down the road in a long time, I had been avoiding it due to the mechanical laminitis he had shown in his first x-rays. It was also the first time I had put the bridle on him in a while too! We just walked, no real work, so I don't know how the bit flexions are helping yet. But it felt like just a normal thing to do with him again, which I think we both appreciated. 

Luckily once I came back down on Tuesday, the arena was good enough to use! Pretty good to make it through 4+ inches of rain and only lose one planned riding day. 

Working On My Footing

I posted about repairing my arena earlier this week and this post is going to be about what I'm working on right now with it. 

This tractor has done a lot of arena work

My arena footing is concrete sand and I've had it in there for a long time now. It's the footing that Rico and I were riding on when we were competing and generally I've liked it.

When we first put the footing in, it was about 3.5 to 4 inches, but over the years it has compacted. You drag at around 1 inch, so with enough watering, dragging, and riding on it, the bottom layers of sand compact and then you're left with less loose sand. This has meant that over the years, we need to bring in transfers of sand to add to it. 

I used up the last of the sand pile a little while ago and when TC started rehab this fall, I decided that I wanted a little deeper footing, so I ended up dropping my drag a bit so that it would fluff up the arena a bit more. I wanted to avoid bringing in more sand before the winter hit. That worked and it's been much softer for his sad little feets ever since. 

Formerly a sand pile, now storage for
my jumps and my roller!

One major issue with concrete sand is that it lacks the stability that a lot of arena sands have. It's not nearly as bad as beach sand, which has round grains and feels terrible to ride on. But it's not as stable as silica sand or a footing with additives like fabric. However, silica and fabric can then be too stable where they feel hard. Honestly, my sand feels great to me when it's properly watered, but I have considered replacing it. That'll be a conversation for another day though. 

In order to keep the footing as stable as possible for TC during his rehab, I've started to obsess over the arena watering situation. 

I circled roughly where the sprinklers are located

I have five sprinklers in my arena, and they do a decent job at watering it... as long as there is no wind. And also as they've aged, they don't quite get to the middle of the arena comfortably anymore. I've ordered a couple of new sprinkler heads to see if I can help them out, but I also stopped to pick up a lawn sprinkler and a hose at my local hardware store. 

It works well! I can just drag it into the middle of the arena when I get to the ranch and then I can shut it off when I get TC into the arena. I'm still working out exactly how to set it up so that it actually waters where I want it to, but for the most part it does what I want it to (keep the middle of the arena saturated). 

TC appreciates the sprinklers

Another issue I've had is that even when the arena gets saturated, when it's warm, the water evaporates really quickly. So for example, my watering takes 1 hour 15 minutes, with each sprinkler running for 15 minutes. By the time that the last sprinkler goes off, the first sprinkler area has already had 45 minutes of the sun beating down on it. 

I'm considering in the spring using an arena additive that will help retain the moisture. I haven't done a huge amount of research yet, but I do like the idea and will look into it as it gets hotter and dryer. 

Lots of tractor work this year!

Next post on the arena I'll share some of the ideas I've had to make more permanent improvements to it. Such as expanding it, squaring it off, re-grating it, getting new footing, dropping my sprinkler system into the ground, or all of the above. Not sure when that post will come out since I haven't written it yet and I'm still surprising myself by how consistent I've managed to be posting again after literal years off. 

Arena Repair

I've been putting some additional effort into my arena over the last year or so. This will probably end up being three posts - one about the arena repair I did last year (this one), one about working the footing I'm doing now, and one about the options I'm considering for the future. 

When the arena was put in, we really didn't know much about arenas, so it's grated in the wrong direction, all the water in the winter rushes diagonally down to the gate and into the creek. Steadily this took away my base from the corner by the gate, which made my oddly shaped arena even more triangular. 

The creek is along those trees at the top of the
photo, the gate is on the righthand side at the top,
the longside on the bottom (which is the most normal)
is a bit less than 40 meters if you're curious

My IG story explaining

The damage was pretty crazy! We caught it about a year ago and I'm glad we caught it when we did. As we swept and drew away the sand, we kept finding all these waterways. 

All the damage to the base

Another angle of the damage

Luckily, my brother is amazing, I got him to help and we both dug out the long side of the arena by the creek so that we could allow for more drainage on that side. 

Digging out the sides of the arena

We also got a load of blue rock and did our best to repair the base and somewhat plug the gate area up from allowing water to go that way. It was definitely a learning experience.

First layer of base rock

Second layer, we'd water and then pound it

Many more layers

After the first rain, we learned a few things and fixed them! 

Water will just find somewhere else to go oops

That definitely worked, the base itself I haven't ridden on all that much, but it at least prevented more damage from occurring, and opening up the long side for more drainage did help. 

MUCH better

Since it was better, but still not perfect, I ended up investing in a roller. It's filled with water and we can easily hitch it up to the ATV and roll the arena in not very much time at all! The roller made a HUGE difference, with barely any sand (in comparison) leaving the arena in the last few rainstorms of the year. 

The dog didn't want to be left out

When I post about this again, I'll go into more detail about what I'm doing right now to further improve my arena situation. And then we'll talk about the future since I'd love some opinions on that!

Starting Trot Sets

Yesterday it rained! This was totally unexpected (well, it would have been expected if I'd looked at my weather app) but it gave me the opportunity to get TC started on his trot rehab because the footing was so good and, more importantly, he was actually asking to work for the first time in a long time! Thank you rain! 

It was a beautiful day at the ranch

I've been going down a rabbit hole with my footing this fall since it hasn't really been worked with since I was riding Rico regularly. Like it's fine - over the years I've added sand to it to keep it deep enough and somewhat level, but now that I know TC's feet are sensitive, I wanted to make sure that the footing is really good. 

This may entail me redoing my arena, I'm going to get a quote for a variety of things I may want to do soon. This could be anything from just leveling the base and getting new footing to expanding the current arena or I've even thrown around the idea of putting in a second (much larger) arena out in the pasture. I'll see if I can make a post about that since I'd love to get some advice on what to do.

Anyway, after a week or two of messing with my sprinklers, it rained and that reminded me how good my footing is when it's properly saturated! So that made me feel better about the feeling that I want to stick with my concrete sand. And TC felt similarly (also it was much cooler out). 

Morning chores include dragging the
arena (sometimes while listening to
a meeting for work lol)

I've started to longe him for his rehab in order to get him walking more - I'm not supposed to ride him until after his first shoe cycle on October 7th. But I'm a little unsure of doing much riding even when I'm "allowed" to because his lower back is still a little bit tight and he just doesn't have much topline. 

I don't want him to struggle to support me and then use the wrong muscles to do so. So my idea is to get him fitter on the longe line and watch his back. If it gets worse, then I can at least know that it's due to the work and not due to me. Vs if I got on him right away, I wouldn't know whether I had just gotten on too early or whether it's something that is going to be a problem no matter what. I'm definitely going to be getting a bodyworker involved, that'll happen in early October too. 

Anyway, I wanted to get him moving more without me having to lead him all over the place, so I've been putting him on the longe line each day. My goal is to have him walk about 30 minutes and he thinks that is VERY boring, but he hasn't offered much outside of just asking to go to the gate. 

He's a big fan of himself at least

Yesterday though, we saw a 20 degree drop in temperature (mid 90s to mid 70s) and it rained all morning. I took TC out midday when the rain had stopped and I could tell he was feeling very silly about the rain. He and Rico had already been funny about it, wandering out to their pastures nipping at each other. So as we were walking, he tried to play a little bit, picking up the trot and at one point even cantering off randomly. I can't remember the last time he willingly did anything like that. 

So I set up the interval timer on my phone and decided to start his rehab a bit early. We did four 30 second trot sets with 30 seconds of walk in between in each direction. So four minutes of trot total. Although for one of those trot sets, he cantered the entire time. I wasn't going to stop him! He doesn't have a tendon injury, I just want him to slowly build up to full work since he's historically gotten sore if he does too much (I mean, same, literally typing this I am super sore from lunges the other day, if I were a horse I'd be seeing the vet lol). 

He had a great time trotting and even seemed to want to do more, so that was great to see. He hasn't wanted to do a single thing in months now. I've felt like I'm forcing him to work and that's why we took a break from it. But I think he's actually feeling a little better - his feet are definitely looking better and his back is as loose and relaxed as it's been in a long time (still a little tight though!). So it gave me a little hope. 

Oh and he also VERY quickly figured out the interval timer, he'd hear it go off and would immediately change gaits. So I might need my headphones eventually!

I'm still riding at least, pony and I go
out on the tracks a few days a week

We are still waiting to hear from the vet about his metabolic panel. But I'm 99% sure that he's about to be diagnosed with Insulin Resistance, whether caused by an early onset of Cushings or the more probable general EMS diagnosis, I'm not sure. But he shows all the signs and it would make absolute sense that he has it. 

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

This weekend, my arena footing became a bit unrideable. Certainly unusable for a horse with the plethora of injuries that Rico has. So on Monday I spent 5 hours spreading out sand, including a solid hour of shoveling sand into the tractor. I then ran 3.5 miles and came back to ride my horse.

Truckload of sand came in today...

Done!

Tuesday morning I woke up in pain (no shit, Sherlock) and actually ended up taping my back to hope that it would alleviate some of the pain. After riding two tricky horses and then walking around the horse park to school over the show jumps, I came home to hook up the trailer and go to my lesson. I wasn't expecting much. I came into the lesson warning Tracey that I may need to stop the lesson early to go home if my SI joint went out, which it had threatened to do earlier that day.

Luckily for me, Rico was in a great mood and really wanted to work. That coupled with the tape and an extra tight back brace allowed me to get through the lesson. And it was a great lesson!


I told Tracey I wanted to do the pirouettes first because I was worried about my back and they were the most important. We started with walk pirouettes to examine the biomechanics. Rico had good right pirouettes but wanted to step his inside leg to the inside in the left pirouette, which I will go into more later. Next we worked the transitions between the collected and pirouette canter, which I've been drilling for the last two weeks. Tracey saw a big difference in Rico's ability to sit down AND stay active in his canter so that was a great confidence boost for us coming into the show this weekend.

We then worked on the turn. We started on a 10m circle in pirouette canter and then rode in travers. She noted that the issues I was having with the turns were primarily in the quality of the connection and how much control I had over his shoulders. To the left, the main problem is that Rico wants to step inward with his left hind leg as I mentioned above. This causes a multitude of problems including a loss of bend in the body and my loss of control over my right hand and left leg. To fix this, I need to come into the pirouette in a strong shoulder-fore and my left leg needs to be very active. To the right, the main problem is that Rico doesn't stay on my left rein so falls to the right. To fix it this direction, I needed to keep my right hip on the saddle (as I tended to fall to the right with him) and keep my left leg active.

After the 10m circle work, we rode the pirouettes themselves. After a couple of quick changes following the pirouettes, I was instructed to put my lead change at various places, including some at C to practice for PSG. I started riding the PSG pattern a bit and we were quickly disciplined  for our crappy counter canter, so I have something else to add to our canter bootcamp!

In the pirouettes themselves, the biggest thing that I took away is to leave the pirouette the moment it gets bad. Diagonal isn't perfect? Don't do it. Start the collection and he sucks back? Don't do it. Start the turn and he swings around? Don't do it. Half way through the turn and something goes wrong? Don't do it. Tracey was adamant about this and it reminded me of something a previous trainer told me: practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. If I keep allowing the pirouettes to be bad, I'm going to get really good at doing bad pirouettes.

I was feeling great physically by this point so we decided to do some trot work. Rico was a bit tired, so when we started trotting Tracey said "kick him, that's not even a good working trot." I thought that was pretty amusing. Once we got a good collected trot, we started the shoulder-in. I was having serious left rein problems but once we fixed those, Tracey was very complementary of our shoulder-in in both directions. The half pass was a HUGE improvement, Tracey told me I was getting really good at it.


At the end of my lesson I had a treat! Tracey has two shadbellies that she isn't using anymore. They're old, but I have them here at home now to see if they fit me! One of them does, which means that the only thing stopping me from showing this donkey PSG is some crappy counter canter and the ever improving pirouettes.

Provided the show goes alright this weekend, I'm aiming for Rico's first PSG to be at the August 3rd/4th Yarra Yarra show. That gives us about 6 weeks! We'll also do the East Bay Chapter show two weeks later so I should have two PSG's done before I go into my MA program.

From the Sandbox to the Trails!

I've been a really boring horse owner these last few months. It's been rainy so I've been having epic battles with my arena to keep it rideable. The winter is all about "when do I drag?" "when do I roll?" "when is it okay to ride?" and "why is there sand in the creek?" "why is there a canyon of base rock in the arena?"

Why is there a pot of gold on my horse's ear?

But on the days that I can ride, Rico is doing well! I've had to scale back my spring goals because it is unlikely I will be able to keep him in the kind of work that would bring us to Prix St George any time soon. So right now I'm really focusing on little things, such as rideability in the pirouettes, flexion to the left, straightness to the right, aaaaand TRAIL RIDING!!!

Beautiful view on a beautiful animal!

That's right, I took off the bubble wrap, put my gorgeous beast in the trailer and took him out on the trails! He was pretty disappointed, as seen in this picture:

Unhappy horse wishes he was in the arena

There's a beautiful trail facility nearby my house called Harvey Bear. The place was devoid of bears and actually of most other creatures that day since it was misty and cold.

Harvey Bear!

I love this place- you can ride way up into the hills and around a lake, or you can ride on the gravel path. I, of course, chose the flat path around one of the cow fields as my horse's first real trail ride in over three years. Rico came off the trailer bonkers. He settled down a bit, with the help of my wonderful father who is tall enough to man-handle my horse when necessary.

Calm horses are more fun to trail ride

It was slick out there, but my horse was a pro, he marched through puddles, walked quietly across wet asphalt when necessary, didn't spook at anything, and overall had a very good time.

And I got some nice pictures from the back of the good horse!

I had a really wonderful time too. It was SO good to get out with my horse and stop worrying about him so much! I've been obsessing over this horse's soundness for so long, and that coupled with trying to get him up to a level that the vets weren't sure he would ever get to, and my own stress at school and work, was taking a toll on me. 

Plus, pirouettes make me dizzy!

I am so glad that I can enjoy these moments with him! I love having my old horse back who I don't have to obsess over... as much.

Back to "normal!"

This summer I'm planning on riding him all over the hills of Morgan Hill. As much as I adore riding him in the dressage arena, it's not fair to him that every time I put him in the trailer, he goes to a new sandbox. 

Not a sandbox!

But today it was back to the dressage work! He had yesterday off because I had an exam and then work, but today I had plans to do all the lateral work and maybe some extensions. This plan was dependent on my arena being useable, which it wasn't! So I managed to do some really cool basic exercises just using the outside of my arena (the only non-gross part). Here is my short list of things I managed to do before both of us were totally bored:

- 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8 exercise (10 steps trot, 10 steps canter, etc... I got him down to 2 steps trot, 2 steps canter!)

- canter-halt transitions (THESE WERE BEAUTIFUL)

- two steps medium in trot

- no-stirrup work

Tomorrow I have plans for setting up my dressage court. I got brand new dressage letters for christmas so I want to run through 4-2 in my makeshift court! I'm planning on actually measuring out where the arena needs to be in order to be as close as it can get to a real court. 

The horse, of course, has plans for more trail riding...