From: Micki
Jessica: 1. I can't believe I'm actually writing. I never do "stuff" like this.
2. Horse-sense is superb. Your responses are kind, while astoundingly thorough. You must be my trainer's twin!
3. Background: - The round pen where I board/train is aprox. 30 feet in diameter. - I work my wonderful 16h, 6-yr.-old Arab/NSH gelding in the round pen at walk, trot, and canter for about 15 minutes before we ride (no longe line).
4. Question(s): - Is the pen too small? (I wouldn't ask if I hadn't doubts!) - If so, what's the minimum? Do I need something of John-Lyons-round-pen proportions? - And if working him in larger-diameter circles is better -- I'd do it in an open area on a longe line -- what do I say to my trainer that will not seem to be a criticism of her facility? Building another, larger round pen is expensive!
Many thanks, Micki
I'm glad you asked this question, because round pens, like arenas, come in different sizes for different purposes. One size does NOT fit all. There are breaking pens, working pens, and training pens - and those are just the three basic types/sizes of round pen. Your worries are legitimate. You're trying to use a breaking pen as a training pen, and it just won't work.
A lot of older facilities have tiny round pens, known as "breaking pens" or "bull pens". These are often only 35' in diameter. These tiny pens can be useful for slow unmounted work - for instance, teaching a horse to tie or lead, sacking out a horse, introducing a horse to tack. They can also be useful for teaching horses and new owners the first basics of roundpenning at a walk and jog, and they can be useful places to turn out a stallion or a foal to get some air and more freedom and exercise than they could manage to get in a stall, but that's about the extent of their usefulness. Even if the footing is perfect and your horse is warmed up very well before you take him into the round pen, the tiny circles are just too stressful for leg bones and joints. This is not a pen to use for fast exercise or serious longeing - unless the horse is highly trained and superbly developed physically, it won't be able to move correctly or even carry itself correctly bent on such a small circle. And it's definitely not a suitable size for ridden work. If the horse is carrying a rider, there are even more demands placed on the horse's legs and balance, and the size of the pen becomes even more critical.
A "working pen" might be 50' or more in diameter. This would allow you to work a horse at a walk, jog, and trot - but probably not at a canter, unless the horse was compact, balanced, experienced, and well-trained... and it would definitely NOT be the place to introduce a horse to the idea of cantering under a rider.
A "training pen" - this is the point at which a round pen becomes REALLY useful - would be at least 66' in diameter.
A 20-meter circle - the basic working circle for a low-level dressage horse in the first years of its training, and a good MINIMUM size of circle for any horse at the start of its training - would be 66' across, and since horses don't usually work up against the side of the pen, but on a track to the inside of the pen wall, I would suggest that any round pen used for riding be at least 70' in diameter. If you're going to do a lot of cantering in the pen, it wouldn't hurt to make it even larger. The size of the pen needs to correspond to the sort of work you plan to do in it. A pen 75' in diameter would be ridiculously large for someone who planned to use the pen only for sacking out and tying lessons. On the other hand, pens used by trainers who do cow work are even larger - sometimes four or five times that size.
Not everyone is willing or able to put in a round pen of sufficient size to be a training pen. At some facilities, especially urban and suburban stables, it simply isn't possible to build a training pen, because the space just isn't there. So there are really two ways to look at the issue. If you have the space and are willing to invest some money and a good bit of time (or much more money and much less time) in building a training pen, then your question will be "What size pen do I need for the work I want to do?" If you don't have the space or the time or the money, and a larger pen isn't an option, then your question must be "What can I safely do with my horse in the pen I have now?"
If you have a good trainer who is concerned for the welfare of the horses, you won't get any argument about the need for a larger pen for ridden and/or faster work. Of course, your own attitude will have something to do with your trainer's reaction - "I'm going to teach my horse to longe because I need to work him on a larger circle" is a reasonable thing to say to your trainer. "Your crummy roundpen is too small, what's wrong with you anyway?" is NOT a reasonable thing to say to your trainer. If you think that there may be space for a training pen, and you're willing to invest YOUR time in helping to build one, you might suggest this to your trainer. It can't hurt to ask, as long as you do it diplomatically. If your trainer has only used the pen for sacking out, etc., s/he may not realize that there are people at the barn who would like to use it for training and riding. Just be prepared to accept it politely if the answer is "NO", for whatever reason - space, planning permissions, other scheduled construction, or simply not enough interest. In that case, it may be time for you to invest in some longeing equipment and some good longeing lessons instead.
If good longe lessons aren't available, don't risk doing without them - longeing, badly done, is worse than no longeing at all. Instead, consider warming up your horse by walking him around the arena once or twice, then mounting and riding him at a walk for fifteen minutes or so, until he is warmed up enough to continue the warmup at a trot. Don't think that you're necessarily doing the horse a favour by working him in a pen - any pen - instead of warming him up under saddle. And in this case, with the pen so small that only a fully-warmed-up horse could reasonably be asked to trot in it, much less canter, your horse will be much better off in the long term if you warm him up in the conventional way.
At the end of the day, it's your horse, the legs and joints being strained belong to YOUR horse. Eventually YOU, not your trainer, will be living with the effects of trying to work that horse in a too-small pen. Whatever you decide, put your horse's welfare at the TOP of your priority list, and you won't go wrong.
Jessica
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