11/30/2025
Tested our mettle on the trails again today… if this sentence sounds counterintuitive to you because “trail riding” brings to mind a nice, leisurely, stroll through the peaceful woods, please remember Tara and I know how to turn everything up to Level 100,000,000, plus, we have legit coordination and conditioning goals for these critters, so… 🧗♀️🌊🚵♀️ I absolutely love it - I’ll take my daily dose of adrenaline in any form, thank you 😆 - and (un)surprisingly the show horses just go with it because, first and foremost, they are horses… THIS is what they were made to do! 😉
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16irdpH7xb/?mibextid=wwXIfr
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐚 𝐈𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦?
I never grew up with an arena.
My father thought it was a complete waste of money. He was a cow man, dairy farmer to be exact, not a horse man, dislikes them 🫣, and if you could work cattle across it, you could ride a horse on it. So schooling didn’t happen in a fenced area with sand, it happened wherever the land allowed.
Without realising it at the time, that shaped everything.
We schooled in fields and woodland. We had hills that taught balance without explanation. Cow roads dressed with gravel and lime slippery, uneven and honest where horses learned rhythm and respect for their own feet. We jumped ditches and drains because they were there. My father, God love him, built a few jumps himself for me, never level, never the right height, and absolutely never forgiving. There were blue barrels, stony ground, bog ground that would put the fear of God into most people before it ever troubled a horse.
And the horses relaxed.
Not because it was easy, it wasn’t but because it made sense.
This is what I think we lose when we rely too heavily on the arena. For many horses, the arena is the most unnatural place they are ever asked to exist. Straight lines that aren’t really straight. Circles that don’t occur in nature. Repetition without a destination. Pressure without release they understand. It’s not laziness or defiance that unsettles them, it’s confusion, vigilance, or memory.
Out in a field, the land does half the teaching for you. A hill explains engagement better than a dozen instructions ever could. Uneven ground demands attention without tension. A ditch doesn’t care about an outline it cares about honesty from horse and rider.
Forward thinking horses, especially, settle better outside. Their brains have somewhere to go. They’re allowed to look, to process, to travel. In an arena, that same intelligence often turns inward. The body braces because the mind is trapped.
And then we blame the horse.
We call them sharp. Difficult. Opinionated.
Better outside than inside said as if it’s a flaw. When very often it’s the opposite the horse is easier because the work carries meaning.
Field schooling allows imperfection. There is no expectation of symmetry, no constant correction. If a stride shortens uphill, that’s information. If a horse hesitates at bog ground, that’s self preservation. They learn to balance themselves before a rider ever interferes.
Compare that to the arena, where we can mistake stillness for relaxation and obedience for understanding. A horse can look beautifully rideable and be tight as wire underneath held together rather than moving freely.
I’m not anti arena, I’d love an indoor arena (I hate rain🤣). Used well, it’s a valuable tool. But it should refine education, not replace land, variety, and common sense. The arena should never be the only place learning happens.
Some horses will never fully relax between boards. That isn’t disobedience or attitude. It’s often a horse saying quietly, this environment doesn’t explain itself to me.
The field does.
And sometimes the most honest schooling isn’t neat or symmetrical. Sometimes it’s mud on your boots and horse, crooked lines, uneven ground and a horse that finally breathes out because the world around them makes sense.
Below was prime example of a fence on the woodland I used for schooling, this was at a drag hunt years ago on Daisy the Connemara by Woodfield Sammy.
