...the start of our own ground poles!! I love (and truly miss) working with ground poles. They are sooo good for sooo many things for both horse and rider. The possibilities of usage are endless, and good for progressive work. If we had a larger space to work with I would do six poles, three for each side of the arena. But four will work great for the space we have. We'll use them for straight lines, boxes and zigzags, and eventually some elevation....can you tell I am excited?!!
I/we have never made our own. I've always enjoyed others, and used them many different ways - especially when I took riding lessons years ago. More recently we had fun riding the boys over poles at Iron Horse. I know painting the poles helps guide both rider and horse, but wasn't completely sure the best placement. Obviously a center mark, but then where? I did a little research, and found it's a good idea to also mark the ends.
I am also not sure of how far apart to place the poles. They were always set up, spacing had been done by others. More research pulled up various spacing, 4' apart to start, another said 4 1/2' for a walk, 6 1/2' for a trot and 9 1/2' for a canter. I know it depends on the size of the horse. We'll likely figure out how many paces works best for our boys once we try our poles. I can't wait! Now we need to go buy paint...white and maybe red bands? Not sure yet.
Does anyone have a favorite resource on schooling ground pole patterns they can recommend??
I have several patterns in my notes. Everytime I learned a new pattern, I would come home and write it down. I thought one day they might come in handy :)
5 comments:
I am no help to you , but if you look on my side bar , the ladies at either GoLightly fiction(just leave a comment and she will do a whole post for you likely) or The Well Groomed horse. probably lots more of them as well
woo HoOo! I love ground poles too. Makes the horses think.. AND pick up their feets..
There's a book called 101 Jumping Exercises for Horse and Rider that has, I believe, a significant number of exercises with ground poles, although size and the number of poles required may or may not work for your facility. Your tack store might have a copy you could look at.
I'm a big fan of poles - especially the good wooden ones - the PVC ones are too light and roll too easily.
I just have downed branches, no poles, so I'm no help there. But it's got me thinking. I learned from your post something I didn't know about painting the middle and the ends, Thanks for that.
We bought paint yesterday, decided on white and red - and then came home with four more poles lol. Our space is limited, but more poles gives us more options and less moving.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone!
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