29/05/2025
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You know you don't have to lunge your horse in circles, right?
I don't know who needs to see this, but plenty of folks do- at least going by the amount of "lunging is really bad for horses" comments I've seen recently.
If you run your horse in circles for 20 minutes because it's too bat s**t for you to get on every time you want to ride it, then that's not lunging; that's just a good way to trash your horses suspensories and keep your vet and farrier on speed dial🤷♀️
So if not circles, what CAN you do on the lunge? Hot take, but you can use the long sides of the arena too! That's right, you can lunge in straight lines! How? By moving. Your. Feet🚶♀️ By walking from A to C and back again. Horse too fast? Even hotter take: run with him! Horse is descended from Secretariat and you can't keep up? Buy a longer rope so you don't need to run so far. Boiling molten mercury take? Teach him to slow down or stop altogether! Can't do that? Then you have work to do and something new to learn.
Forget the tweedy Pam's and Susans at Pony Club who told you your feet MUST stay still with your lunge line and whip creating a triangle that cannot be broken. If your arena is the standard 40 x 20m, you have ample space to help your horse stretch and straighten; you don't need to limit yourself to the 17 meters your lunge line allows and cling to the letter C like it's the last lifeboat off the Titanic. You can do circles of course, but they don't all need to be the same size, speed or in the same half of the arena. Use your imagination and, heaven forbid, your own legs!
Here's working student Vesna lunging Titus. We lunge all our horses at least once a week as a way of schooling them without a rider. For our rehab cases, it's a powerful tool in getting them to use their bodies correctly and build strength and familiarity with the arena before we begin riding them.
