PECOS, Texas – Family trips ring a little differently in the world of rodeo.
Take Summer and Seth Boyd, who don’t rightfully take vacations with their daughters, but they’re always traveling together. In fact, they’ll be in Reeves County in a week for the West of the Pecos Rodeo, set for 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 25-Saturday, June 28, at Buck Jackson Arena in Pecos.
Nine-year-old Emmie and her little sister, Jinsen, 7, are part of the family business, which is trick riding. They’ve joined their mother and perform at Western events across North America as Summer & Co. Fearless Equine Stunts team.
“It’s so neat to be able to be at a rodeo with that much history,” Summer Boyd set, referencing the event’s status as the “World’s First Rodeo.” “I love all the history, and I think that’s fun even in home school. It’s so fun to get to go to these places and be part of it. We feel fortunate because we just feel like we’re such a small piece of it. We trick ride. We do what we like to do.
“Because of that, we get to have all these wonderful experiences and meet all these neat people that becomes friends for life. It happens just because we worked at something we love to do. It’s almost surreal at times.”
Boyd didn’t just pass down her trick-riding expertise to her children; she shared her passion for it, too. The family lives near Lovington, New Mexico, just a two-hour drive from Pecos. The Lea County Fairgrounds in their hometown features Jake McClure Arena, which is massive, much like the Reeves County complex.
“We love big pens, because we like hard-running horses,” Boyd said. “We can work small pens, too, but it’s fun in trick riding to really let your horse open up and move. Since we live in Lovington and the community’s nice enough, we get to practice there some. We’re strong and our horses are strong, so we don’t have trouble in those big pens holding tricks or changing things up.
“We’re happy to go out there and just let our horses run.”
Their work in the arena is rodeo pageantry at its best. There is an art form to trick riding, and Summer Boyd has a pretty good handle on it. Her daughters have developed amazing skills in a short amount of time, and there’s a unique display of showmanship watching two young ladies pull off stunts that boggle the mind.
“Doing this together as a family is every bit as wonderful as it seems like it would be,” Summer Boyd said. “I don’t think I would be doing it if not for them also being interested in doing it with me. It makes all the difference in the world, and it’s fun to do it with them.”
Boyd has watched her children not only progress technically, she’s seen them flourish in confidence. Both are comfortable riding all sorts of horses, and Emmie has added a new skill to her repertoire.
“My 9-year-old is Roman riding this year, so she has two little black ponies to do that,” Boyd said of riding a pair of equine superstars in unison while standing on the animals’ backs, with one foot on the pony on the left, and the other on the horse on the right. “She used to trick ride on one of them.
“She outgrew a pony she was riding last year, so she passed it on to my youngest. They both have a big horse that runs hard and that they can do a lot of strap tricks. They use the ponies for tricks that you need to jump off, need to hit the ground and jump back on, the things they obviously couldn’t do on a big horse.”
It’s certainly a spectacle, which is why the volunteers of the West of the Pecos Rodeo are bringing the family to town.