Solo takes his first look at the roundpen where he will spend a lot of his training time over the next few weeks.

We have boots on all his legs but no over-reach boots. I would advocate that you use over reach boots in addition to the leg boots to lunge or roundpen your young horse. I have had some issues with over reach boots tripping horses up in the past and I prefer not to use them unless the horse shows a tendency to tread or over reach.

The first time we introduce them to the roundpen we don’t do more than trot gently both ways for a few minutes. Work on a circle is hard on young joints and growing muscles. As Solo is only three, and the ground is extremely hard this year, we will be very conservative with the amount of time we will allow him to spend on the lunge and in the roundpen. As soon as he is fit enough, we will take him out on a lead from another horse. This will give him something new to do, lots of new things to see and be less stressful on him than circling every day.