What is the size of your round pen

[goodhors]

We have a 60ft round pen, wooden 4 board sides on railroad tie posts. It is a SOLID built pen, for the horse who doesn't want to listen. Sides up about 5ft 8 inches.

In all the reading on training, 60ft is the recommended size. As already said, allows horse to move out, but keeps bending them around. I would not want a square pen for doing ground work, horse has too many choices with corners!

We use a long stick whip, with long lash for those moments when you need to "push" the issue or horse is ignoring you. These are not the purchased Lunging whips, those things are both awkward to carry and heavy on your hands and wrists, lash is NEVER long enough to reach the horse! Our light whip, with the VERY long light lash is quite handy, goes exactly where you want it going. Lots easier than throwing ropes, and the finished horses here will be seeing whips when driven. Just another tool they get used to, not abusing anyone.

We find we don't use the round pen a great deal, just at certain stages of the training. Then on to other places. If you keep using the round pen, horse does not advance the way we want them to.

 

[ducks4you]

I didn't think that my rectangular training area would be easy to work in, but I find that I can do a lot in it. I like that I can work either on perfecting turns through circles or on getting my horse to track correctly all of the way around. I can school a correct "teardrop" change of direction, or a figure-eight, or a spiral, or lateral movement in little chunks, and thus develop musculature. I can even get my 16'2hh KMH to canter in it, and since he's still learning canter cues, it's preferably to letting him decide to break in a larger area without a cue, or speed up his amble.
I can also do serpentines in it and use my corners to reinforce turns on the haunches and turns on the forehand. I can cue for transitions using the corners to cue or to half-halt before the turn, or to use fenceposts as markers.
I have taught lessons in round pens, and I find that they can be limiting unless they are very large.
The BEST use I have at the moment is to get my 4 year old geldings to stand still while mounting. Although I can mount a tall horse from the ground, my tall colt has had some issues and we are retraining him to stand still while mounting and to stand while we use a mounting block. A circular pen has NO corners to help me with this.
Just some thoughts.