Short and sweet. Sometimes that's all the training you need to do with a youngster. Tonight that was what Guin and I did with *Bill and *Jack.

After everyone was fed and settled for the evening, I went down and turned on the arena lights. The lights are metal halide and so need a bit of warming up before they are bright enough. Then we haltered the both of them and walked down.

Our main purpose was just to get them used to the idea of being in the arena, at night, with the lights on. Things look different at night, both outside and inside, and for horses the more experience they get at different things the better off you both are.

We just did some walk/trot in hand, took them through the labyrinth a couple of times, and worked on backing up by the Driving Game.

Neither of them was worried or concerned about how different things looked and both stayed "on task". Considering that *Bill is just a long yearling we felt he did very well!

Both walking down and walking back, because it was dark and things were shadowed differently (and covered with snow), we did have a couple of threshold moments. But once they got a good look at whatever had their attention and saw that we were relaxed about it, off they went again.

Our only sticky spot at all was when *Jack and I stayed behind to turn the lights off! It was very dark, and *Jack was a bit surprised. I just kept speaking to him and we made our way to the arena door.

By next year we hope to have a small light installed just for those times.

I love having a lighted arena! What a blessed life we have!