Ideas for things to do with my young horse?

[Cheyenne]

Hi,
I have a three year old horse with 60 professional rides on her. She is actually a very broke for her age and is very confident in the arena. I am looking for some fun activities to do with her that will help make her an amazing broke horse that are fun for both of us! I have been trying to ride her three or four days a week and then work on fun games or fun ground work activities on the other days. Would love some more ideas!
Thanks!

 

[Jane&Ziggy]

What do you do already? You could try liberty work, horse agility - some of the obstacles are fantastic - or any of the groundwork exercises in here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/101-Horsema...23&sr=1-1&keywords=101+horsemanship+exercises

 

[joosie]

3 or 4 days ridden work and then groundwork on other days is a fair amount for a 3-year-old to take in. I am not against 3-yos being broken, I've broken in a number of ponies that age including mine, and work on a professional competition yard where the horses being prepared to compete in the 4-y-o classes are broken and start doing their first jumps at 3 and a half. But 3 is still very young and they do need plenty of downtime as well, partly to have the time to digest the things they've been doing and the things they've learned. A mix of riding and groundwork is perfect but you do need to make sure they also have time to just hang out in the field just "being a horse" with their friends. Personally I wouldn't want to do something every day unless the horse was getting naughty/aggressive due to boredom.
When my boy was a baby we did a lot of in-hand walking and that was great for him for several reasons. Gentle walking on the roads helped strengthen his joints and muscles, it was relaxing (for both of us!), and it taught him about things like traffic, tractors, livestock, barking dogs, noisy gardening, plastic bags in hedges etc (all the potential scary stuff) so that by the time he was broken at 3 he was already practically "bomb-proof" as far as riding out was concerned. In-hand obstacle courses were another favourite - you can get all sorts of ideas online as a lot of people do this kind of work with their horses (and not just people with youngsters).

 

[newforest]

I didn't start mine until four. So at 3 I was leading out, longreining, lunging here and there.
I took her in the school and our fields where I would be riding later on.

I love polework and there is a book or two on it. But you don't need that many. She did know about trotting poles and she had jumped teeny jumps with and without fillers. I made a watertray.
Obstacles yes and no, my mare isn't really in this kind of thing, she is more interested if we find them out and about though. It was great initially but she soon found my obstacles uninteresting and not scary. But out and about the same obstacle is scary.
I think I picked things to do from the horsemanship 101 book.
I know I kicked a ball about because I wanted to mess about with polo later on. Hitting it from on board was no big deal and neither was swinging the stick, done it from the ground.

 

[Cheyenne]

Thank you! I have thought about just walking with her around the town. She is boarded in a small town that is very horse friendly and we can walk through the orchards and throw down town. I think I will try that.

 

[Wally]

I have a 4 year old and Ll we will be doing until next spring is slow rides out, not school work, just long, slow rides up and down hill.