In My Boots: Look ma, no saddle… or bridle

Blogger Kristen Kovatch ditches her tack to perform at Alfred University’s seventh annual freestyle reining event.

From Kristen:

I tried to write two or three different essays to accompany this video, but in the end none of my words could do this horse justice. All I really have to say is thank you, Andy–at the end of a long semester, you showed me that at the end of the day all that should really matter is a girl and her horse. All the rest is just background noise.

This is not the best bridleless/bareback trip you will ever see, but to me in that moment, it was everything.

[Alfred Equestrian]

Go Riding.

Kristen was an English major at Alfred University and was then hired on after graduation as the western teacher and trainer at the university’s Bromeley-Daggett Equestrian Center. She would joke on that irony but her students don’t find it very funny any more. Kristen coaches the varsity western team and teaches classes in western riding and draft horse driving. She has shown reined cow horse, reining, western pleasure, and draft horses, as well as dabbled in hunt seat equitation. Between her horses and her students, Kristen is never short on stories to tell. Some of these stories can be read at her blog at thewesternlife.wordpress.com. She has also been published in Today’s Equestrian, Take the Reins and Ranch and Reata.