Top 6 Reasons to Have a Riding Buddy

Redheadlins and I ride together a lot. Here's a list of my 6 favorite things about having a riding buddy.

Yeah, check us out

1. Instant feedback. She's a much better rider than I am, but she doesn't look down on me. Instead she always yells at me to "canter on" and I nearly fall off my horse laughing when she eats Diva's mane over an 18" jump. Noted: she has stopped doing that this year. She needs a new flaw or I'm going to start feeling inadequate.

Diva did it first

2. Peer pressure. Diva and Courage are in pretty similar places in their training. As such, we're constantly having a friendly competition. "Oh, well Diva jumped the bigger jump so now I have to." Obviously, this could be taken too far, but we both want thet best for the hoses, so it just seves to keep us motivated.

Hellz yeah we can jump barrels

3. Course setting. On Sunday, I had some extra time and so I set up a whole new course with inviting little jumps and flowing turns. On Monday, she had some extra time, so she jacked all the jumps up and added a shit ton of fill.

S.C.A.R.Y.

But we did it because Diva did and we all know that Courage is the best at jumping. I swear he's competing with Diva anyways.

Like our second attempt at a gate

4. Extra Bravery. I am hesitant to tackle big, scary issues on my own because I always want to set my horse up for a good experience. Having another set of eyes and a more experienced rider around gives me the courage (ha!) to address things I probably wouldn't otherwise for fear of screwing up my horse.

Because yeah, my face

5. Laughter. This is the first time we did the gate. He started to jump it normally and then was all "OH SHIT WHAT IS THAT MADNESS?" and took a flying deer leap. When she could finally stop laughing, we figured out a new plan and readdressed it.

But I never would have tried that on my own.

New profile pic. Yeah.

6. ALL THE PICTURES. I straight up love pony pictures, so I really don't think I ought to explain much beyond this. For those doubters who are all like "private lives are private", I'll just add that nothing helps me improve quite as much as the ability to look over the highlights of the day and then make adjustments for my next ride.

In the age of technology, this is so easy. We used to trade off phones for pictures, but it's so hard to catch the right moment, plus her camera is better than mine. Now we just take video on her phone and then grab video stills.

This particular round is pretty amazing, but the less amazing ones help us too.

Those are just the top six reasons for having a riding buddy, and I haven't even touched on the shared stories and instant sympathy and mad cooking skills. (Noted: never compromise on these. You have to do something when it's too cold to ride.)