101 Arena Exercises for Horse & Rider (Read & Ride) Plastic Comb – January 9, 1995

I am a riding instructor and purchased this book as a resource for my personal library to pull ideas for children's lessons. I like to have as many resources as possible for both my personal training, and the teaching of others, since every individual horse or student is different and learns in different ways. This book is well written and easy to understand. I have applied many of the concepts to my students' lessons, and they have enjoyed practicing many of the exercises from this book.

This is a great book to help you work and bond with your horse. I'm fairly new to the horse world but I have extensive dog training knowledge. This book is easy to follow and very well written.

I love riding my horses, but it's not always easy to take to the trails and riding in an arena can get pretty darn boring in a short time. So this book is great to have because it gives all kinds of ideas for working with your horse and improving skills using patterns and exercises. Yes, I can set up some cones and guide my horse around them, but having some actual goals and different activities is really helpful. It is fun for individuals or a group and a worthwhile investment even if you just use it occasionally.

Easy to follow exercises with good application to arena riding of all types. Helps me to understand some basics on my own time.

This is my 2nd copy of this book since someone walked off with my 1st copy. Sometimes I'm tasked with training a horse on the flat for fitness, flexibility and basic balance. It can get a little boring if you don't have a plan for every ride, and you don't want to do the same exercise day in and day out, for you or the horse. This covers all the basics and more, when you don't have a trainer on the ground to work with, or you have been asked to 'give a few lessons' to a beginner , this is an amazing book to start with.I usually flip through it and choose one or two exercises to work on. with a warm up, transition work (all covered in the book) and a few exercises you can be sure to have a decent and well rounded session with your horse that both will benefit.

Well written with clear, concise examples.

An example of the poorly written mess I encountered in this "book":Exercise 14: Half HaltHow to ride: trot(exercise 6), corner (exercise 31), halt (exercise 19), trot (exercise 19), halt, trot, half halt, trot, half halt, trot.How to apply half halt: Think. Apply seat, leg, and hand aids. Yield. Keep upper body straight, maintain deep still contact, keep both legs on horses side, use appropriate intensity with both hands.Now can you tell me what exactly a half halt is and how to do it? All I know is that while doing it should be keeping my upper body straight.Another proplem I have is as you can see by the above example is that you can't just pick up the book and do a lesson because each lesson incorporates a lesson that you haven't even gone over yet. In the above lesson we were in lesson 14, but it refers to lessons 31 and 19. So you have to continually flip through the book to figure out how to do just one lessonAlso in one area it says to initiate a right lead canter with your right foot and in another it says to initiate the right lead canter with the left foot. I really don't think this book is good for a beginner unless they have a trainer to decode this mess for them.I gave 3 stars because while the info is garbled it can be used.I recommend "Western Practice Lessons" by: Charlene Strickland for well detailed and understandable arena exercises

Arrived rapidly. Was as described, good condition. Removed pages from binder, laminated then & reassembled book. Now should last a long time as I have it hanging on gate for arena referrence. Nicely illustrated.