# Creating and maintaining a dry lot/ arena



## Horseychick87 (Feb 5, 2014)

A few questions first, before I answer further:

Does the area drain well?

How hard is the ground?

Is it slick when wet/ damp?

If you need to improve it do you have the funds to do so or are you on a tight budget?


----------



## jenkat86 (May 20, 2014)

The area drains exceptionally well.

The ground will get very hard in the summer months.

It is straight dirt- so you can get to slipping and sliding when it is wet. It's typically isolated to one small area though. I usually trailer out to a real arena when the conditions aren't great. 

We lease the property, so we aren't able to do any permanent changes to the pastures- such as adding sand or something like that.


----------



## Horseychick87 (Feb 5, 2014)

Ahhh, okay, that does help.

It's good that it drains so well, except for that one area that get slippery. Since you can't add anything to the ground to soften it, you likely couldn't do anything for the slippery area either.

I'd basically try to till the ground up and then grade it so that it slopes a tiny bit and that might help the slippery area drain better.

For the hard ground issue, ideally you could add sand or something, but since you can't I'd say you may have to drag/ grade it frequently to keep it soft. Maybe every other day, to every two days depending on how often you use it and how compacted it gets.


----------

