In his editorial this month Peter Rizzo talks about the need for enclosed areas for working horses.   A couple of years ago my wife and I took some green horses to Florida for the winter.   These horses were trained to ride and one actually had some polo experience and the other had stick and balled in the relative quiet of our polo field in upstate New York.  We arrived in Florida between Christmas and New Year’s when Florida can be cold and windy.  People who move to Florida claim their blood thins out and they can no longer stand temperatures in the 40’s & 50’s.  As someone who spends most of his winter in the frigid northern clines where we average twelve feet of snow during the winter months, I can personally attest to the fact that blood does not thin out.  The damp cold of a 45 degree day in Florida is far more painful that a 20 degree day in upstate New York.

Anyway, I digress.  Janet and I were excited to get moving on these green ponies that  had been fairly calm and docile while being worked at home, so we tacked them up and headed out on the exercise track that circles the 130 acre Ten Square Farms just south of the Vero Beach Polo Club.  The exercise track is fairly well maintained and in most spots wide enough that two sets of three horses can work side by side.  There is a canal to the outside and the ten square farms (from which the development got its name) lie to the inside.  There are also plenty of long grass marshy areas in and around the canals.  That day the wind was blowing probably at about ten or fifteen miles an hour, but the horses thought it was more like thirty as we tooled along.  We rounded the first corner and up flies one of those birds that you always find in crossword puzzles, an egret, a turn, an erne or one of those other exotic tropical bird that looks like a pterodactyl to a green horse in a cold windy strange setting. Both horses knowing this monster bird was about to swoop down and carry them off to its nest to feed its hatchlings jumped what felt like six feet in the air.  Mine then spun out from under me and started back for the barn while Janet managed to stay atop hers after convincing it that the barn was not where she wanted to go, and caught mine before she made the turn for home.  Remounted and sore we somehow gutted it out the rest of the way around the track that now felt about six inches wide as we watched for birds on one side and alligators on the other.

When we finally made it back to the paddock, a nine acre fenced field, we decided discretion was the better part of valor and worked the horses inside the fence.  Finding the horses much calmer we continued to work inside the paddock until the horses were more settled from the combination of regular work and the calming hotter weather that comes later in the season.

Training Centers

I relate the above tale because, just as Peter Rizzo and countless other riders have experienced, a controlled environment is a much safer place to deal with the unknown when it comes to horses.  This is true for advanced riders with fresh horses and it’s true for the beginning rider that needs to get his or her confidence before venturing into the wide open spaces of a trail or a polo field.  For these reasons most instructors prefer to have an arena to start new riders and polo players.  The USPA and the PTF have jointly developed a plan with a long term goal of having a polo school at every USPA member club in the country.   It will start out with the USPA naming five Regional Training Centers at polo clubs or schools, in areas where there is a sufficient population to grow membership.  The Regional Directors will wear several hats.  They will teach a polo school at their center, and will also be a resource to help start schools at other clubs in their region.  The USPA will partially support the Regional Directors with the idea that they will communicate the resources of the USPA and help to grow the membership by bringing new players to the game.  The PTF will also be a resource to these schools by helping with instructional resources.  In addition, support for the instructional part of the Regional Director will be able to be funded with pre-tax dollars donated to the PTF mostly from donors from that region of the country.

Going back to the experience most of us have had in an uncontrolled environment, it will be a requirement that the Regional Centers have an arena.  Not only can instructors have better control of their classes in the arena, but it also increases the numbers of horses available for lessons.  Many horses that are hot or runaways on the wide open prairie are docile little baby sitters when they can’t see the horizon.  There are other advantages to having arenas.  They lengthen the season, even if they are not covered.  If they have an all weather footing they can be played most of the year.  Even up here in snow country an outdoor arena could be used some years right up into December.  They also provide a great venue to start green horses or horses that have been off all winter and might think they are auditioning for a rodeo come spring.  Arenas also provide great training aids.  There are many more set plays that can be taught in the arena than on the outdoor field and those plays lend themselves to teaching riding aids while relating the exercises to game situations.  For example, most beginners will not realize when running at a ball on the wall, that the horse doesn’t really care whether or not the rider hits the ball.   Most horses, seeing the wall fast approaching, are merely concerned with not running through it and will take the easiest exit possible.  There are exercises to teach the rider to balance the horse using their weight and legs and very little rein to give the horse the confidence it needs to allow the rider close enough to the wall to take the ball with them.  On the same theme, the arena is great for green horses because the walls can be used to help collect the horse and they can be taught to stop and turn by using the walls instead of the reins to balance and handle.

Wilbur O’Ferrall who teaches countless clinics to Pony Club and 4-H groups on their own horses strongly recommends that the group that hosts him tries to find an arena for his clinics.   He is a master at introducing the game to these kids and in a three day clinic has them playing a scrimmage on horses that have never seen a polo ball before the clinic began.

It’s also an inexpensive way to get started.  Two horses are all you need to play a full game, and again because of the controlled environment, you don’t need quite the quality of horse that is necessary for a full sized grass field.

So if you have a polo school, want an inexpensive way to play, or just a spot to start your green or your fresh horses, an arena is the way to go.  It will be a lot of fun!