New surroundings

I’d like to introduce you to a new randomly occurring feature here at Rounder! I have dubbed it “A Photo With A Story”, which I think that is fairly self-explanatory. For now, I plan to use it as an outlet for eventually getting to tell the story in bits and pieces of my first  and lifer horse. But who knows where we’re rowing or which way the river’s flowing, wait, wrong movie, sorry! Haha, okay so onto the real content, I promise.


For a long time, (I’m not sure how long, but for years okay) I wanted to ride in an indoor arena, just to experience it. Since Hawaii does not have seasons in the traditional sense, an indoor is not eminent to riding in the wintertime. Until I came to Indiana, I rode outside or not at all. There was no try. I mean, no middle ground. I’ve even ridden on days that were supposed to have a hurricane and tsunami (not the same day, thankfully). My point is, weather on my island is mild. The most people will do is have a covered arena. In my mind that was second best next to an actual indoor arena with walls. Once I bought my horse, my dream to ride in an indoor expanded into specifically riding her in an indoor arena. Yeah, I reach for the sky.


I knew of only one covered arena on the island. I looked at it intently every time we drove out of town. It is located on the “wet side” where it rains so often that mold discolors the sides of houses. (My town has a “wet side” and "dry side” and we refer to it as such. But that’s off the topic of horses, so I’ll let it go.) I suppose the owners wanted to be able to ride and hold events without getting wet. Makes sense. I did not realize that the community college had built a newer covered arena for their budding equestrian team. I found out about it when my barn owner told me that she was going to do a vaulting demonstration there with the vaulting team she had organized. I quickly peeped up “Can I come along and bring Miss Take to keep Roxy company?” Roxy was the Shire/Percheron that the kids did their vaulting maneuvers on and was not as versed in travel as my horse was. I was super excited when I got the okay and started imagining how my horse would react to being ridden in a covered arena.

Although I had taken my horse to the two venues on our island that held dressage shows, it did not count as going to a “new place” because she had already been to one of those places in the past and had actually lived at the other place before coming to my barn. So I had never experienced how my horse reacted to new surroundings. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Miss Take, or Miss T as we fondly call her, had begun to develop a certain degree of trust in me. She only spooked with me if there was a plastic bag whipping in the wind or a sheaf of papers blew at her feet (or that one time that she thought a lone calf was running straight for us). And even those spooks were getting smaller and smaller. Despite her placid nature, I knew that she also had more of a timid side as opposed to being naturally brave and confident. I wasn’t sure if I should expect my usual saint of a horse, a frightened mare, or something in between.

Covered arena? Meh. Give me more carrots!

How does your horse react to new environments and surroundings?!