You should rewrite this for Out of the Trenches ! <| sep |> I didn ' t think Kentucky was that mountainy or great for coal mining like wv <| sep |> A big part of it is teaching the rider how to control the horse . We would replace the rider if need , but we prefer horse and rider to overcome the challenge together . Honestly it goes far in improving the trust between horse and rider . We want the rider to command the horse over the obstacle while we provide incentive . Often we ' d walk another horse over while the new one followed , led by rider on foot . But again , it wasn ' t just about training the horse . We wanted to teach riders to be assertive and confident so that if the time comes where they ' re out in the middle of nowhere and they need to get their horse through something , they ' ll know what their horse ' s limits are and how to handle it . PS The riders weren ' t inexperienced , we had requirements for entry . But just because some girl has been out on a trail ride before or has jumped competitively doesn ' t mean that she ' s not going to get real nervous when her horse gets really skittish . Many riders never got to see their horses behave that way before we started pushing them outside their comfort zone . PPS Before some expert shows up to tell me I was doing it wrong , this was 15 years ago , I was 1718 or so and the first year I was an assistant to a senior instructor , and when I began leading the class I did it in the same manner as my predecessor , and we had excellent results . A lot of very happy riders thanked us for the learning experience and we never had an injury while I was there .