The roundpen is not just a place to exercise your horse
and/or
"get the
bucking
out of him". It is a SCHOOLHOUSE.
While he is in it, your horse will learn that
you mean business
while there. In order for a horse to learn, you must
have his
full attention. The roundpen is one of the most important/
advantageous/all-around
tools
to get to know your horse,
and, therefore, teach him. When I say "teaching and
learning",
I mean that we 2 legged humans must relay the signals of
when
to do specific movements into the horse's language. Horses are
not capable of learning human
ways, so we must learn their's.
They already know how to trot,
lope, back, sidepass, etc.
We must learn how to show them (with our
body language)
when to do these things. And remember that while in the
learning stage, everything must be exaggerated
until the horse
picks up on the lesson.
The title of my website includes roundpen, so let me explain
exactly what that
is. My husband Gary and I built our's at
one end of our arena using 4X4 posts and corral
boards
making a circular enclosure with a 50 foot diameter.
(Diameters of
between 35 and 60 feet are fine.)
We are in the process of re-arranging our
arena and
roundpen using steel rails. The pen should be
completely
round or the horse will try to "hide" in a
corner!!
(We made that mistake to begin with! By building our
roundpen
within our arena, we left one area squared off,
thinking to save time and money.
But that's just where
both of our horses tried to stop and hide!!)
