Ground work

My saddle I have been riding with is very old and it has now fallen apart...
I can't afford a new saddle, JUST yet, but I am close!
In the meantime I want to keep my horse exercising.
Any ideas on some ground work I can do with my horse?

Lungeing and/or long-reining are the best ways of keeping your horse fit without riding... you could also try riding bareback?

Haha yes I know bareback is an option

Look up the parelli 7 games...those are fun...and very useful.

You could work on desensitizing your horse to different objects like...tarps, plastic bags, windchimes etc. That way your horse will become more bombproof.

Back up, yielding, bending, lowering head, lunging, free lunging in a round pen, trotting in hand.

Showmanship---setting up, back up, turn on forehand/hindquarters, trot...those are all forms of groundwork.

Clicker training. I clicker trained my horse to do a lot of different things! Clicker training is sooo much fun! You can teach your horse tricks, manners, groundwork, targeting etc.! Tricks like...nodding, saying no, picking up objects, smiling, bowing, laying down! The list goes on and on! Google it...there are a lot of great websites about clicker training...not many books though. Feb default.html

Ground tieing. That's something I'm currently teaching my mare to do. Its basically when the lead rope is laying on the ground....they horse is not supposed to move. Its useful because the horse won't walk away if the lead rope is on the ground. I used clicker training to teach this to my horse. But you don't have to. This is the video I went by.....

Trail walks. That's all I did with Aires for the first three months I owned him. We went on a trail walk almost every single day. It helped improve his ground manners because he had to be in-tune with me and it helped desensitize him to allll sorts of stuff. Now I have the only horse at the barn that loves mailboxes.

If you have access to a round pen, you can do all sorts of things that can be fun for you and your horse.

Put a tarp on the ground or other obstacles like a bridge and work the horse over the obstacles. Great for building trust and such.

Can you build an in-hand trail course? We built one the last two summers using things we found around the farm. Barrels, rain coats, tarps, a flag tied to a pole, ground poles, bridge. We took the horses through it in hand, then rode them through it. It was a nice break from routine and a lot of fun to build.

Thank you, I built an in-hand trail course...
It worked very well and was good fun

Thank you very much!
This should keep her busy until I get my saddle

Theres all kinds of things to do with your horse for ground work, desensitizing is great. I personally love playing soccer with my boy when im home. Well chase each other around the arena kickin his giant soccer ball. But it depends on how much ground manners your horse has and how much you trust them.

Yes I tried that for a little while, but she only looked at the ball once.
Any tips on teaching her how to play?