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Trail riding is a lot more enjoyable if you put safety first. You should always keep in mind the safe practices and always exercise a good common sense. These are important because your instructor will not be by your side to guide and help you all the time. Also, you would want to ride on your own eventually, which is a fulfilling experience.

Here are the top 7 rules all riders must follow on the trail.

1. Always inform somebody where you plan to go trail riding and when you plan to return. Always keep in mind that anything can happen on a trail ride. You or your horse could become ill, lame, injured, get lost, or get stuck. If something unexpected happens, there will always be someone who will come looking for you.

It is always advisable that you ride with someone else if you are an inexperienced rider and you want go to an unfamiliar place. A child should always be accompanied by an adult rider in trail riding. If you are an experienced rider and you want to go trail riding alone, always bring with you a communication device like a fully charged cell phone. This way you can call someone in case of emergency.

1. Always bring a hoof pick and a pocket knife. If your horse gets a stone lodged into its frog, you can use the hoof pick to get the stone off its hoof. If you dont get the stone off and let the horse continue to walk, the horses hoof will get very sore. If your horse gets caught in vines or thick brushes, you can use the pocket knife to free your horses feet.

2. Do not teach your horse to become lax as they are not smart enough to discern playtime from work time. Trail riding may be a relaxing time for you, however, you must not allow your horse to become relaxed as well. Otherwise, you will be left without control and the trail is the last place you want to be without control.

For example, you allow your horse to grab bites of grass as you walk along the trail. Next time when it will be on the way to a show ring gate, it will get aggressive and plunge its head down at every blade of grass. You will be left momentarily without any control and you do not want that.

1. Always ride a respectful distance from the other riders but do not create unnecessary anxiety among the horses. Sometimes, violence among horses happens because they always communicate with each other. This is something that you should consider, so always keep at least one horse length between you and the next rider in front of you. But, do not cause them to think that the herd is getting split up.

2. Be cautious when trail riding on a terrain that is not familiar to you. When trail riding on an unfamiliar terrain, always be careful and do not run. You do not know if there is an overgrown ditch or a covered up hole along the way. It will not be good if your horse stumbles on one of them and get its legs hurt.

3. Horses get easily scared, so you must know what to do when this happens. Foreign objects it sees along the way might scare it. The best thing to do is to ignore it, so your horse will ignore it too. The idea is, the smaller the deal you make out of it, the smaller the deal it will be to your horse.

Do not force your horse to get used to something that scares it by going back and forth in front of the spooky object. Help it deal with what scares it by letting it look, walk slowly and sniff the spooky object. Then, your horse will eventually learn that the thing is not scary at all.

1. Walk along your horse with comfort, especially if you come across others on the trail, like hikers, bikers or other riders. Your horse will likely react the same way you do. If you are friendly to other people, your horse will be friendly as well. If your horse senses your nervousness, it will get nervous too. And this may cause something unexpected to happen, like your horse may bolt unexpectedly.

There are several other rules a rider must follow when trail riding. But, these are the top 7 rules to keep you safe so you get the most out of your horseback riding experience.