I don't own an "arena". I have a round pen. Sometimes in a pinch, I refer to my round pen as my arena, but that's not what it really is. This means that I have spent most of my time schooling my young horse Toby in the wide open. Wide. Open. As in no fences. If I feel the need for some confinement, then we move to my 1-acre chain-link fenced back yard.

I am schooling Toby around the pinon trees. I want him to learn to anticipate my cues and where I am going to ask him to turn, especially when it's not clearly marked for him by a fence. (My daughter's Andalusian I can ride on a light, loose rein through the corridors of trees, using only my legs. But we've been doing this together a long time. My husband's little Arabian will find a path through the forest where you'd swear almost on your life that one couldn't possibly exist. Sometimes she will find one when you don't even ask her to. There's no falling asleep or daydreaming on that hot-blooded critter who's up to taking the initiative in the event the rider checks out.)

Toby is trotting his big trot through the trees, and I am turning him with my legs. We are doing pretty fine. And then we are presented with a big, tall pinon, the sturdy branches of which are high enough for him to pass beneath, but not me, way up here in nosebleed territory on his wide back. I jiggle the left rein, push him over with my right leg (that would be my outside leg for this momentary arc of the circle), and we pass so close by the grandfather, that the pine needles brush my shoulder and I can smell the sap.

Suddenly, we are out in the open and I feel an immense sense of relief at not having my head knocked off.

I think I offended a woman at the dressage barn the other day. And I didn't mean to. Really, I didn't. She'd strolled over from the dressage barn next door, and as I was holding this huge vaulting horse, standing with him in the shade of some centuries-old pinon trees, waiting for our presentation, she came over to chat with me. During the course of the amiable conversation, she mentioned that she preferred this barn that she was visiting to her barn next door, because people actually rode outside here. Then she continued to talk about how much she enjoys riding outside. I agreed with her. Me too, I said. I really like to ride outside. (A strange conversation I'm thinking to be having about riding horses, who are, last time I looked, animals ... outdoorsy types.) And then I opened my mouth and galloped forward by making the genius statement that I don't know how the horses of people who ride them in circles all the time don't go crazy.

Well, that woman didn't say anything, but you could see by that flicker in her eye that she'd taken offense. And she'd just been describing some nice-sounding rides outside of the arena ... (Maybe she'd been exaggerating with all that big talk about outside?)

I'm not sure I'd do well with all of the barn politics.

I suspect that very nice woman has no idea how much I'd enjoy, love, simply relish being able to school Toby in an arena--inside or out.