Keeping the dust down in your arena.

One more facilities thing that I did want to touch on is keeping dust down in your indoor riding arenas during this time of year. Even though most of our horses are out for training, we still use the arena to turn out the mares and their new foals so that they can get exercise.

This means it's extremely important to keep the dust down in the arena. The new foals can't handle the dust and it may damage their developing lungs.

The problem is that in this weather our sprinkler systems won't work, and we've even busted a couple hydrants from the severe cold. What we've resorted to doing is keeping a hose in the house so that it stays thawed, then dragging it out every day and using it to hand water the soft pack. It's a pain in the rear, but it's the best way to get even watering during cold conditions. If you try to use lawn sprinklers on the end of a hose, it causes pooling and packing, which will result in you having to spend extra time tilling your arena in the spring.