We currently have a grass arena. We have plans for it to be turned into a footed arena, but it is what it is now. It’s a nice spot to ride our horses, but honestly, I tend to get pretty bored, and can’t always come up with something to do so we end up walking/trotting around in circles. Boring.
I was trying to figure out a way to work on our skills in an interesting way and Pinterest, which never lets me down, led me to trail courses. 😀
There are some pretty complex trail courses that are well above our level at this point, but I found a simple one, and we already had everything we needed to set it up. So we gave it a go. Here’s the simple trail course we found on Pinterest.
We put this trail course together using items we already have. We have barrels (of course lol), small cones, and we used our DIY poles for the cones in the first obstacle. We also had landscape timbers we use for ground poles. We just used something big enough to pick up for obstacle #5. We did not put it in a bucket, but that will be the next step. We started super simple to increase our confidence.
Here’s our trail course:
So, to run through this course you start at the bottom left of the image, in front of the cones. Enter from the left hand side and weave the wide cones, then weave the close cones. Come up around the left side of the barrels and do a complete figure 8 around the barrels. As you come out of the figure 8 head toward the square. Stop in the center of the square for 3 seconds. Turn on the forehand left one quarter turn and stand for 6 seconds. Proceed out of the square and make a left turn through the cones. Trot to the next set of cones. Turn left out of the cones at a walk. Come up the left side of the barrels and stop at the first barrel. Pick up the item on the barrel (or in the bucket) and then proceed to the next barrel and drop the item off on the barrel (or in the bucket). Last thing is to go straight through the box to the other side and stop.
This seems like a pretty simple course, but there are so many skills you can work on while you’re doing it. It can be challenging if you’re new to this type of thing. Here are Goose and I working on the figure 8 and stopping in the box. We definitely have work to do on picking up the items. 😀
As you get better on the course you can change it up, do a backwards figure 8 through the barrels, run the whole course backwards. There are so many things you can do. Or you could just go to Pinterest and find a harder course to start working on! I’m hoping to pick a new course weekly to keep us moving forward and challenging ourselves, so stay tuned for more trail courses!
I’d love to hear your trail course experience… tell me all about it in the comments!