Overcoming new obsticles

This stems from the puddle post. I am really curious how people overcome new obsticles they encounter on the trail.
I trailer all over the country and often run brand new trails. I never know what I will find coming around a corner. Could be a pedestrian foot bridge, a flite of stairs, a steep slippery bank, a rushing stream, a big washout or anything. Even a large lawn mower parked in the middle of the trail?
How do you handle all these new challenges??? I often have to wait on busy street corners for the traffic light to cross. At one time a bus pulled right up in front of us, openned the door with a big whoosh of air and a smiling driver asked if I wanted a ride
I unload in a corner of a maul or the side of a busy highway and ride from there and again you run into everything imaginable and you don't have time to train for everything you will encounter.
So how do you do it??? Get off? Say please?? Advance and retreat until you get past the obsticle?? Find another way around it??
How about a narrow foot bridge over a ravine and NO SIDES?? Again do you turn around, retreat and try to find another way around???
If we give all this attention to a puddle what are you going to do with a 3 foot wide dame, concrete, rushing water on one side and a 12 foot drop on the other side?? Again retreat??
I train with force. I will put my guy against any Parelli trained horse, any one.
I fought the battle over the puddle last fall and after that he never refused again.
So guys how do you handle new rides, in new places with new obsticles???
The only thing I got off for, the only thing was a low tunnel under a 6 lane highway that would have taken my head off if I tried riding through but that is the only thing the forced me off the horse. Every single thing I encountered over the summer he did without hesitation once he felt the bump of a spur.

When I had my loan pony, I would make him carry on and we would fight occasionally but not very often but only once did I ever retreat and that was because we were on a busy road with lorries going past so it was too dangerous to keep going and we would have been hurt. I have gotten off on occasion and lead him past objects again when it was too dangerous for me to stay on because of traffic or other people. I found though the best way was to get someone to walk out with me so he could see that these things were actually safe. When we would canter there were two logs at the end, he wouldn't jump them at first so I kept repeating the exercise over and over uptil he was jumping both and loving it and he never refused another jump on that hack except one that was too big for him which was my fault.

It actually depends on horse.

With my qh I let her smell it and ask her to go forward. If she shy away I turn her back and ask her to go forward again. If it's TOO bad I'll get off and walk her close and let her explore the obstacle all over.

With my paint if she doesn't make it on first attempt I get off and walk her through.

I know some people think getting off means horse won, but I totally disagree with that. I rather hand walk them back and forth couple times, then get on, cross it and go as nothing happen then fight with them running them scary and mad. IMO it's what called "outsmart" the horse.

I agree it depends on the horse since with him if he'd been allowed to go away then he would really take the mickey since he was intelligent and would use the time to think up ways of not doing it but when I moved onto my next loan who was an ex racer and still a youngster fighting with him wasn't a good idea because he would panic, it was nice and easy with him because he was still young and learning how to be a normal ridden horse rather than a racer.

Horses are expensive to keep. I spend about $5000 per year keeping my boy. It costs the same to keep a good one as a bad one. Sorry why mess with all the screwed up horses and just get a good one, sell the bad ones and be done with it.
I choose a horse carefully since I am going to put my heart and soul into him. I actually hobble a horse right in front of the owner with his/her permission of course to get an idea of the fight in the horse. I also blind fold him to see his reaction.
I only choose stallions which will be cut the next day, no mares.
I want a brave horse, I want a male and I don't want one that will fight until it destroys itself.
I do fight a few battles but they make the horse. A battle fought and won by me strengthens my control over him. In any horse's training I run into at least 2 good fights and I am not talking about his initial breaking, that might of might not happen.
Those 2 major fights come after training and can be as much as 6 months into the future but we will fight them sometime.
One is the puddle that represents everything else we run into but the worst fight , the one where it can really take more time comes with the side pass. The stupid side pass, something I can teach any horse in a few days. A simple side pass to the left and right, on command and done correctly.
The fight every time comes later in his refining when I ask him to sidepass over obsicles, obsicles that he walks over without the slightest fear or hesitation. It will come, it always does, I always win and in the end he does what he was told to do but it involves a fight.
From then on he is made for sidepassing, he will not refuse again.
So the puddle and the side pass are the 2 major things I have to deal with somewhere down the line, I will not sidestep them, don't look forward to them but after that the horse doesn't refuse again.
For those that think I rule with fear haven't seen my guy following me around like a lost puppy dog

In some cases if the footing is treacherous I get off because I don't want to fight my horse and end up killed. Most of the other time I give them a little time to look and keep the pressure on them to move forward and each time they get through something they are a little bit faster to go through the next thing.

My fights are picked. The puddle was a nice big round one in the bush and I decided today was the time to settle the puddle issue, I picked the time and just told him to walk through it, he said no and after about 5 minutes of disagreeing he walked through it. Did it 2 more time and that was the end of it ever again. The puddle only represented all the future times I would tell him to move forward.
The sidepassing?? I picked the time, the footing, the place to fight that fight. He gave me just as much trouble if not more then the puddle but in the end he did sidepass over the obsticle and did it for the next couple of weeks over everything I could find. He is dead broke to side pass when ever and whatever I choose.
He is new broke, about 13 months but in the last 8 months or so he has refused nothing and I do run into scary things, planed things or suprises he handles them all. NOt just him but everything else I have owned.

I never 'fight' the horse.

#1 - they outweigh me, by about 10 times

#2 - as a fight or flight animal - instinct is going to kick in before they 'give' in.

#3 - I want the experience to be positive.

Boils down to respect and trust.

Absolutely agree. They are much more willing to deal with the even more scary things if the 1st one was positive and easy on them.

You do make a lot of sense. The ex racer didn't have a good foundation into his riding career so he was very hard to ride as he didn't bend well and wasn't too comfy to ride out. Luckily I was able to back away and say that he needed someone who was more experienced than I was.
I don't fight with a horse to the point where I'm beating it, I just don't back down and the horse has trust in me that I know what I'm doing.