Nod Your Head, Cowboy

The cool thing about being A. a contestant and B. at a small, local rodeo, you can get right down in the middle of the action. While watching, try to tune out the rodeo announcer and concentrate on the pickup men and gate man.

Notice the guy on the white horse. He's sitting as close as possible to the chute because the proximity of his horse helps keep the one in the chute calm. As soon as the cowboy is ready to nod for the gate he backs off to give the bucking horse room to fire.

This would be Cole Jacobs from my Texas Rodeo books. "I'll help you any way I can but don't be messing around on my horses. Get in, get down and nod your face."

And in Tougher in Texas you'll meet the fictional version of that white horse, who I named Salty. He's one of the best characters in the book.

**Addendum: you can also see that the ground was a little iffy due to a rainstorm a couple of days earlier. The committee did a great job getting the arena in shape overall but there were still a few slick spots and this horse seemed to have a gift for finding them.




For more info and where to buy Tougher in Texas visit my website at KariLynnDell.com

Win an Advance Copy of Tougher in Texas!

It's Almost Rodeo Time!

55 days until the release of the next book in my Texas Rodeo series, Tougher in Texas! It sounds like a long time but if your summer plans are anything like mine, it'll be the first of August before we know it.

Like the first two books Tougher centers around a fictional family of rodeo stock contractors, Jacobs Livestock. Well, sort of fictional. I grew up going to Montana rodeos produced by the very real Jacobs Rodeo company, and the name in the book is an intentional salute to a lot of great memories. Last weekend we went to what has been one of the first rodeos of the summer season for at least half of the years of my life, and I was able to catch a behind the scenes video that is an almost perfect replay of the opening of Tougher.

Almost perfect because the real crew does it flawlessly--but flawless doesn't make for a good story, so...

Here's the video, and the opening scene. Meet Cole Jacobs. And if you click on the link in the right tool bar and subscribe to my newsletter by Sunday, June 11th at midnight PDT, I'll toss your name in the hat for one of two signed Advanced Reader Copies of Tougher in Texas.

CHAPTER ONE

All of Cole’s problems would be solved if he just found a wife.

The thought popped into his head at the exact instant that a ton of bovine suddenly bellowed and kicked, slamming into the steel gate Cole was holding and knocking him flat on his ass. If Cole hadn’t stood six foot six, he probably would’ve lost some teeth. The gate caught him in the chest instead, and sent him sprawling in the dirt. His red heeler, Katie, barked once and launched herself at the bull to protect him, but Carrot Top just trotted off down the alley, more interested in checking the empty pens for leftover hay.

Cole scrambled to his feet and snarled as his gaze zeroed in on the bright-yellow cattle prod in the hand of one of the men who rushed to his aid. “What the fuck are you doing with that thing?”

The cowboy took a hasty step back, then another when Cole stalked toward him. “Just hurryin’ things along.”

“My stock moves just fine without a hotshot.” Cole made sure of it, training them from birth to handle easily.

The rodeo season was a cross-country marathon of long miles and strange places. Less stress equaled better performance, and even though the low-current buzz of the cattle prod was more startling than painful, Cole wanted his stock as relaxed as possible until the moment they exploded from the bucking chute. Carrot Top was an old pro. He’d earned the right to inspect the loading chute before setting hoof on the steep ramp.

And to come unglued when some asshole zapped him.

The cowboy ran out of room and backed up against the fence. Cole snatched the hotshot, busted it over his knee, and then tossed it back, the ends dangling by the wires that ran down the long shaft. "Pack that and the rest of your shit and get out of here.”

The cowboy clutched the broken prod to his chest, jaw dropping. “But I’m your pickup man.”

“Not anymore.”

Cole turned his back and strode down the alley to retrieve Carrot Top. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.

Half an hour later, his cell phone buzzed. He was tempted to ignore it, but she would only keep calling until he answered. There was a strong undercurrent of stubborn in the Jacobs gene pool. He heaved a deep sigh and put some distance between himself and the rest of the crew before he accepted the call, holding the phone three inches from his ear in anticipation of his cousin’s displeasure.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Violet yelled.

“He used a hotshot on Carrot Top.”

“So ban him from the stock pens. Hell, ban him from the whole rodeo grounds except when he’s working the performances, but did you have to fire him?”

“He used a hotshot on Carrot Top,” Cole repeated, slower this time.

“I understand. It was stupid. But what do you suggest we do next weekend when you’re the only pickup man in the arena?”

Cole hadn’t thought about that at the time. He’d been thinking about it since, but hiring contract personnel was Violet’s job. If she was here like normal, he wouldn’t have had to put up with a stranger. He wouldn’t have to put up with any of this crap. He could go back to just taking care of his stock and leaving all the people bullshit to Violet. He couldn’t say that, though, and as usual, his brain collapsed under pressure and offered up only the one sentence in his defense. “He used a hotshot on Carrot Top.”

Violet huffed out a breath so exasperated he swore he felt the breeze on his end of the line. “You do realize the doctor sentenced me to bed rest because my blood pressure is through the roof, right?”

Cole ducked his head, crushing a dirt clod with the toe of his boot. He wasn’t trying to aggravate anyone, especially Violet. She was command central for Jacobs Livestock. The hell she’d been going through had thrown all of them for a loop, Violet most of all. She hadn’t been sick a day in her first pregnancy, though Beni had decided to make an appearance six weeks early. She’d been prepared to be cautious and watchful. She had not expected to be sick as a dog practically from the moment she and Joe had seen the telltale line on the home pregnancy test.

Besides, Cole was almost as excited about the baby as its parents. He loved being Uncle Cole, and now a little girl? He grinned at the thought of a future full of ponies and pink cowboy boots—assuming his family didn’t string him up for driving Violet into another premature labor.

Cole huffed out a breath, leaning a shoulder against the back of the infield bleachers. Around him, the empty rodeo grounds looked like a hangover—garbage cans overflowed with empty bottles, corners of banners drooped along the fences, spilled popcorn and a smashed glob of cotton candy littered the ground. Katie nosed around under the bleachers and came out packing a half-eaten hot dog. It all looked ill-used and abandoned—sort of like Cole felt.

Yes, he had put them in a tight spot, but there were some things he wouldn’t tolerate when it came to his stock. Okay, many things. Obsessive-compulsive prick was another way of putting it, though only Joe dared say that to his face. He was family. Plus, he was a lot faster than Cole.

“Don’t try to say I didn’t warn you,” Violet said, her voice laced with grim amusement.

Cole froze. She couldn’t mean… “I thought you were kidding.”

“No, I was not, any more than I was kidding when I told you to make this one work, or else.”

Panic churned Cole’s gut. “Violet, you can’t. There must be somebody else—”

“I refuse to even ask. This makes three perfectly good pickup men you’ve chased off. If you can’t force yourself to get along, I’ll send someone you can’t fire.”

“Don’t. Please.” He didn’t hesitate to beg. If she followed through on her threat, he’d either be insane or under arrest by season’s end in September. “Just one more. I promise—”

“Nope. I’m done. If you can find a replacement before tomorrow morning, I’ll hire him. Otherwise…” He could hear her smirking, dammit. “Your new partner will meet you at Cuero.”

~~~

For more about Tougher in Texas AND handy dandy links to pre-order a copy of your very own, visit my website at: KariLynnDell.com/tougher

Cow Tech

A writer friend sent me an ad from the USPS, showing a rancher out in the field checking the status of his package on his mobile phone. She was highly amused at the idea. And then I had to go and burst her bubble because, yep, we walk around with a phone stuck to us like everyone else. Comes in pretty damn handy when you're a couple miles from the house and bury the tractor in a deep and steep dry wash you couldn't see because of the snow. And if that package happens to be the replacement whatchamajig for the hay baler that has us at a standstill, you can bet your boots we'll be checking to see when it's gonna get here.

Beyond communication and "Um, need a little help here", there are literally hundreds of applications for cell phones on farms and ranches. Computerized irrigation systems send alerts to a farmer's phone, letting him know if there are malfunctions, or if water levels need to be increased or decreased in particular parts of a field. We have an app that lets us enter data on newborn calves out in the field and creates a spreadsheet that tracks cow performance from year to year. And of course there are the podcasts and audiobooks that keep me from losing my sanity somewhere around load #127 of round bales.

But nothing since the invention of pickup trucks has revolutionized the rodeo industry like the cell phone. No more standing in a phone booth outside the cafe in Lavina, Montana, dialing and dialing and re-dialing, trying to get through on the always-busy line to the rodeo entry office. And now when they put you up in Thursday evening's performance when you're already scheduled to be at a rodeo 500 miles away, you can actually track down the people who are on the program for Friday night to try to find someone who'll trade you places. Plus, when you're at the Pendleton Roundup and you can't locate your traveling partner, instead of hiking all over the rodeo grounds to run him down, you just fire off a text that says, "Put down the drink, get out of the Let er Buck room and meet me at the rig in half an hour or I'm leaving without you."

***

My Grandpa, the Legend

This coming Saturday my grandfather, Melvin Icenoggle, will be inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame. He's always been a legend in our minds, and it's pretty cool to see others recognize his accomplishments.

His father died of appendicitis before he was born, so by the age of twelve Grandpa was earning his own keep, exercising race horses at the Tanforan race course in San Francisco and farming with four and six horse teams in Oregon.

As a cowboy, he competed in all three roughstock events, wrestled steers, occasionally roped calves, and put a little extra money in his pockets by also providing entertainment in the form of stunts like Roman riding races, climbing aboard a bucking horse in a steel washtub filled with flour to imitate smoke as the horse blew out of the chute, and one of his crazier inventions, a 'bull chariot'.

As a rodeo producer, he often acted as both stock contractor and contestant. If they were short of entries in any of the roughstock events, he'd ride, then hustle behind the chutes, change shirts, and ride again under a different name, just to be sure the crowd got their money's worth.

My grandfather was one of the founding members of the Montana Rodeo Association and also built the original, wooden jackleg indoor arena that was used at Montana State University and College National Finals rodeos for over twenty years. He was a horse trainer, a logger, a farrier and in his later years, long time custodian of the fieldhouse at Montana State.

We will be gathering in Great Falls on Saturday to celebrate his exploits, and no doubt learn about a whole lot more that can't fit into a press release. Hope to see some of my Montana friends at the induction ceremony, and that you'll stop by afterward as our family gathers poolside at the Heritage Inn.

All the Seasons

So, you want to visit Montana or southern Alberta but you just can't decide which season you prefer? Come in late August or early September, you can have them all.

August 22 at our ranch (NOT in the mountains), 32 degrees.....

August 23rd, Whoop-Up Days, Lethbridge, Alberta, mid sixties...

September 5th, Claresholm, Alberta, forty-five degrees and three inches of cold rain....

September 12th, Brooks, Alberta, eighty-degrees....

And today, forty and foggy with fall color starting to show....

This is why we have a very large porch. We have to have coats/gloves/boots on hand for every kind of weather, every day.

New and Free--Does it Get Any Better?

Getting published can be both the best and most frustrating experience of your life. Because YAY, an editor loves my book enough to take it on, but *SIGH* the waiting never ends, and patience? Not my greatest virtue.

As many of you know, I sold three book series (now semi-officially called the Texas Rodeo books because nothing is truly official until the book is actually printed) to Sourcebooks last November. Because these are rodeo books and the first is set in the summer, their marketing department strongly believes it'll sell best if released during the summer. BUT, there wasn't enough time to get it out there this year, which means waiting clear until next summer for the series debut, semi-officially titled Reckless in Texas, to hit the shelves.

Yes, dear readers, SHELVES. If all goes as planned you'll be able to pick this one up at your bookstore. Or even WalMart or your grocery story. But not my local grocery store (sorry people who live in my town) because I have it on supreme authority from a million-selling author that your book will never be on the shelves in your grocery store. It is an immutable law of the universe. 

In the meantime, people who've read and loved The Long Ride Home have been pestering me for something new. Since I finished the preliminary draft of Book Two of the Texas Rodeo series and have yet to get a real clue where to start Book Three (or possibly who the main characters will be), I dug out an old novella that I've always been rather fond of, gave it a serious tune-up, and posted it on Wattpad. 

For those who aren't familiar, Wattpad is like an online American Idol for writers. You put a story up and readers get to comment-- either on a particular line or at the end of the chapter--and they also get to vote at the end of each chapter, a sort of virtual thumbs up if you liked it. The more reads and votes you get, the more likely Wattpad will put your story on the front page of their website, which hopefully generates more reads and more votes and attracts brand new fans.

So, if you're looking for a quick, fun read and would like to help make me a star without having to hear me sing (believe me, none of us want that) come and join my Wattpad experiment. Read. Vote. And if you like it, use the Twitter, Facebook and other social media buttons to encourage your friends to come along for the ride. From a purely selfish standpoint, if you like my stuff, the more successful this experiment turns out, the more likely I'll make the time to do it again every three or four months until Reckless in Texas is released.

Here's the link to get you started: To Steal A Cowboy's Heart

Also, a huge ovation for Polly Icenoggle who took the cover photo. Is that awesome or what?

Earn Your Spurs Podcast

Yep, it's me, yakking again. This time about the history of our ranch, what it's like when your husband is actually the boss of you, and why a writer isn't the world's most reliable employee. There's also a chance to win an ebook copy of The Long Ride Home if you check it out before March 3, 2015.

EARN YOUR SPURS PODCAST

KariLynnDell.com

Crossing Over

No, not to the dark side, though some ropers might think so at first glance. Or listen, as the case may be. This blog post is a companion piece to an interview I did with John Harrer over on the Whoa Podcast, where I mentioned that the fastest loop in breakaway roping is often in the cross-over. (Helpful hint: the podcast at the top of the page is not mine. Scroll down past all the blah-blah about me and find Episode #49). Yes, I see all of you tie down ropers shuddering at the thought of roping a calf as your horse is moving left. Hang on. I'll explain.

And now all of my non-rodeo, non-roper readers are scratching their heads and wondering if I'm going to repeat that in English. Yes I am. With diagrams. And photos. And video.

First off, for the real greenhorns, what the heck is breakaway roping? Well, it's a version of calf roping where the rider doesn't have to dismount and tie the calf. The rope is secured to the saddle horn with a piece of string. When the loop goes around the calf's neck the roper pitches their slack and lets the rope go. The calf hits the end of the rope, the string breaks away from the saddle horn, and time stops. Hence the name of the event. When all goes well, it looks like this:

Breakaway is the fastest event in rodeo, not counting those bullriders who get drilled into the ground on the first jump out of the chute. And contrary to what many people think, it is NOT just tie down roping without the flank and tie. The most important difference is where you throw your rope. For a breakaway roper, that's gotta be as soon as you're within reach, regardless of the position. When it takes a run of less than three seconds to even place in the money, there's no time to be picky. The best breakaway ropers master the art of catching as they're running up on the calf and have a horse that'll let them hang out and throw a long loop at a hard running critter.

By contrast, a tie down roper will take an extra swing to get his horse, the calf and his slack all lined out. The half second he sacrifices is more than made up by being smoother through the dismount, flank and tie. His horse is trained to run in closer to the calf then slam on the brakes when the loop goes past his head, leaving the roper time to manipulate the slack in the rope so the calf spins around but stays on its feet, ready to be flanked.

In a nutshell, a tie down roper can make up time on the ground. A breakaway roper's gotta get that loop out of her hand as fast as possible.

And that brings us to the crossover. That magic slot right out in front of the roping chute where your horse's trajectory crosses the calf's. Why a cross? Because the horse leaves the roping box traveling at an angle compared to the calf, like so:

This is the sweet spot, but it's also where you can get into a whole lot of trouble if you're not riding your horse properly. Throwing while your horse is moving left in comparison with the calf is fine and dandy on one condition--you can't let her keep going left. If you do, over time what started out as a winning throw will turn into a horse that drops its left shoulder and ducks out before you can get the loop out of your hand.

How do you keep a horse honest? Most of it happens in the practice pen. For every throw you take in the crossover, you make at least two or three runs where you take a couple of extra swings and make the horse move back to the right to line in straight behind the calf. Even on the quick throws, you keep pressure on your horse with your left foot, pushing them back to the right as they stop.

But what if your horse is bound and determined to duck left? After all, everything is set up to push them that direction. You're swinging and throwing with your right hand, pitching your slack on their right side. How do you persuade them to stay straight?

First off. look at how your horse is positioned in the roping box. You want them to run to the front corner of the roping chute because that's the shortest distance between you and the calf. Start with the horse's nose pointed at that spot, they'll break out of the box in the lead that's most comfortable for them. Start with their nose pointed at the middle of the box, they'll either run to that spot, or they'll start in their left-hand lead to move toward the chute. Start with the horse angled toward the back of the chute, they'll start in their right-hand lead to adjust.

Why is that important? Because, as master rope horse trainer Bub Tate pointed out, a horse can't duck left if they're in their right-hand lead. So whether it's leaving the box or running up behind the calf, if you can use leg pressure to put your horse in the right-hand lead, they won't go left when you throw your rope.

Tricky? You bet, considering you're also swinging a rope, operating a set of reins and trying to take steady aim at a calf.  But if you're a breakaway roper and you want to keep getting that money shot in the crossover, it's a trick you need to master.

If you'd like to see what it looks like done really well, here's some excellent footage from the Indian National Finals Rodeo (Take note of Megan Lunak at the 1:07 mark, that's our hometown girl from up here on the Blackfeet Reservation).
 

For more information and links to buy my latest novel visit:  KariLynnDell.com

Snow Job

*

It is one of those lovely little ironies of life that when it's too wet or too snowy to rope outdoors, we move inside. And then it's too dusty so we have to dump water on the arena we're using because it's raining or snowing outside. Nothing like dragging hoses through the mud to make you question your intelligence. Winter makes the process more complicated because hoses and water trucks freeze up and are generally a pain in the patoot.If only there were a way to open up the roof and let just enough moisture fall inside.

Occasionally Mother Nature cooperates and dumps a foot of fluffy snow at an opportune moment, which was this Saturday except for the part where we drove through drifts and a near white-out to go to a Christmas concert. But Sunday, with the help of a tractor with a loader, Greg hauled in enough of the white stuff to do the trick. After another good drag with the arena tractor, it'll be just right.

The Last Cruise

*

It's Always Big Fun Until Someone Puts an Eye Out

Honestly. I leave for two days to go to a writer's conference, and I come home to this:

And this:

The first is thanks to our blankety-blank fall wind. The second is a rope tattoo. See what happens when the women go gallivanting off for the weekend?  

*

Talking Dirty

**
Heads Up:  You probably have a better internet connection than me. Almost everyone does. Therefore, the videos may not take half a lifetime to load for you. My apologies in advance if they do. 

Know how you can tell what event a cowgirl competes in? Ask her how the rodeo went. If the first words out of her mouth are, "Well, the ground was...", she's a barrel racer.

Ground as in the arena surface. Otherwise known as dirt (usually, but more on that later.) Dirt is very important to barrelracers, as they are competing in a horse race that requires three very tight turns executed at a very high speed. You want it soft enough that the horse's hooves can get a good grip on it, but not so soft that they get bogged down. Damp enough to pack well and keep the dust out of your face, but not muddy and slick. (Don't even get me started on the idiot in the water truck who stops to chat on his cell phone, creating a small man-made lake around the third barrel.)

The best analogy I can give to those who are not rodeo people is downhill skiing. The Olympics in British Columbia were a testimonial to how course conditions can take you out of competition before you even leave the start house. Sunshine softens the surface of the snow, making it slower. Shadows and cold weather make ice, which is faster, but also harder to turn on. And rain or snow on the course before you make your run is a disaster. The farther down you are in the start order, the more chewed up the course gets and the harder it is to ski well.

So it is in the barrel racing. Run order is huge. Barrel racers call it being 'on the top of the ground' or 'on the bottom of the ground'. On top means you're running at the beginning, before the horses have dug trenches around the barrels. On the bottom means you're chugging through everybody else's ruts.

Like skiers, different horses prefer different ground conditions. Big, strong horses can power through deep, sandy ground, while smaller, quicker horses usually handle hard pack better. Which means no matter how hard a rodeo committee tries to make their ground as wonderful as possible, someone will nearly always be unhappy. Which is one of the reasons it can be difficult to find suckers...I mean volunteers to serve on rodeo committees.

And then there's the weather. Rodeos tend to last more than one day. In the case of the Calgary Stampede, more like ten days. Stinks to be up on the day of the rainstorm:



Even indoors you have to deal with the top and bottom of the ground, although many rodeos do their level best to keep it as even as possible. In the video below, notice the men with rakes who rush out behind each cowgirl to fill in her tracks:



And then, of course, there's Pendleton, which is like nowhere else because there's, you know, GRASS. And the pattern is HUGE, because the barrels have to be set clear out on the dirt track where it's safe to make those tight turns. The extra distance, the unfamiliar surface and running square into the blank wall of the bucking chutes on the second barrel can mess with even the best horse's mind. Witness the horse that ducks off before the second and third barrels, which has qualified for the Montana Circuit Finals for the last three years running and is generally dead solid:



Barrelracers are quite, um, passionate when it comes to ground conditions. To the point that more than one rodeo committee member has considered the wisdom of an unlisted number. And a bodyguard. Because hell hath no fury like a barrelracer on a rampage. Worse yet, a whole pack of them.

All of which leads up to the Joke of the Week, which I first heard at Pendleton courtesy of rodeo clown Flint Rasmussen:

"My wife is a barrelracer. When she dies, she will have to be cremated, because there is no ground good enough to bury her in."

**

A Weekend from Hell

Two years ago, my best rope horse went lame. I have no idea how she injured herself, or the exact nature of the injury, but she came up short on her left hind leg. It didn’t get better. Not that summer, or that fall, or the next summer. Then miraculously, in March of this year, I went out to check the horses in the pasture and she was running sound.

Hallelujah.

I sat down and plotted out a dozen rodeos I wanted to enter, mostly approved by the United Indian Rodeo Association, mostly within an hour’s drive of my house. At the first one, in Standoff, Alberta in March, I was so excited to be roping on Ember again I could barely see straight (yeah, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).

I missed the second rodeo due to a rather large snowstorm. And in mid-May, before I even started practicing for my summer run, our three year old kicked Ember and took her out of commission again. Possibly for good. I should have taken the hint and quit then.

To say that the remainder of the rodeos did not go well would be something of an understatement. I can’t blame it on the horse. Nico did his part. I roped bad when I drew good and drew bad more often than not. But as ugly as it’s been, it cannot compare to the Weekend from Hell.

It was early in my marriage, when we were still living in South Dakota, and it started, as most disasters do, with a Plan. After perusing the mid-July rodeo schedules, we figured out we could enter five rodeos in three days, beginning on the east end of South Dakota, circling up to central North Dakota, then back down to central South Dakota.

The first glitch in the plan came when we called back to the Central Entry offices to see how we’d drawn up. Yes, we could still make all five rodeos. But we would be roping in the timed event slack after the rodeo on Friday night in Webster, a hop and skip from the Minnesota border, then I was up the next morning in White Shield, a fair hike north of Bismarck.

I gathered up clothes for both of us. Spent approximately half a day ironing shirts. Packed a cooler full of sandwich makings and Pepsi. Put on my favorite black shirt, a little on the heavier side because it was going to be chilly in Webster. We were set.

I nodded for my calf in Webster at just after eleven p.m., slack being slightly delayed by the bucking bull that hurdled the arena fence and went for a stroll through the contestant parking lot, right between our trailer and the one parked next to it. Anybody who says white men can’t jump didn’t see our friend Jeff hop flat-footed into the back of a four wheel drive pickup. I have noticed that athletic ability is greatly enhanced by a ton and half of snot-blowing motivation.

I missed my calf. Greg broke the barrier. Money won: zilch.

Slack in White Shield was scheduled to start at eight a.m. Which meant I needed to be up by seven, minimum, to be dressed, saddled, caffeinated and ready to rope. We left Webster at eleven-thirty. There are three hundred and forty five miles of mostly narrow, two-lane, deer-infested highways between the two. Go ahead, do the math. Yes. You got it. An hour and a half of fully horizontal, non-mobile sleep. That’s not even a better than average nap.

When the alarm went off, I dragged myself out of bed, dug clean socks and underwear out of the duffle bag, pulled on last night's jeans and stuffed contact lenses into a pair of bleary eyeballs. Times like this, it would have been good to own a decent pair of glasses, but I hated mine and hadn’t updated the frames or lenses in years.

I reached for a clean shirt. Something a little more lucky than old black had turned out to be. My hand came up empty. I blinked a few times, forcing the gritty contacts into focus. But the spot where the shirts were supposed to be hanging was still bare.

Which was when I realized I’d left the garment bags with all the clean shirts and jeans hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

I fished old black out of the laundry bag, shook out the wrinkles, and got myself ready to rope what turned out to be one of the fastest Longhorn calves in existence. Well, I think it was a calf. All I really saw was a narrow white blur somewhere in the distance.

We had four hours to kill between slack and the afternoon performance, when Greg would rope. Had we been anywhere near civilization, this would have been a prime opportunity to find a store and remedy our shirtless situation. But I’ve been to White Shield, North Dakota three times and have yet to locate an actual town.

Also, the temperature had climbed considerably from the day before. Those heavy cotton shirts we’d worn to the night rodeo in Webster were beginning to display their thermal properties. Thank the Lord we packed the deodorant in the duffle bag.

Greg roped, we threw the horses in the trailer, and peeled out. Normally, evening rodeos don’t start until around seven o’clock, but Turtle Lake doesn’t have any lights so they were rodeoing at five. We rolled in with ten minutes to spare. I don’t recall exactly what transpired in the roping. I do know it did not involve winning money.

The minute we were done, we jumped the horses back in the trailer and hauled butt for Bismarck. It was our one and only chance at replacement shirts, given that it was the only town on our route with a population of more than two thousand. Probably, things have changed by now. But back in those days, Bismarck locked up tight at nine on Saturday evening. Their mall didn’t even open on Sundays.

We rolled into the WalMart parking lot at nine o’clock straight up. Greg refused to let me pound on the doors and beg for mercy.

Rumpled, smelly and dejected, we meandered the remaining three hours south to Lemmon, where we didn’t have to rope until the next afternoon, when the temperature was expected to climb into the nineties. I wondered if anyone in town might be having a yard sale. Greg told me to suck it up, ol' black was a perfectly good shirt.

We slept until the morning sun turned our mobile bedroom into an extra large oven. My eyeballs felt like they’d been rolled in river silt, so I didn’t bother to put on my contacts while I stumbled around feeding and watering horses and dousing them in fly spray. Then we decided to wander into town to find some breakfast.

The temperature inside the pickup was approximately two hundred and ten degrees. I settled into the passenger seat, still groggy, and started scrubbing two days worth of rodeo dust off my right contact lens. Greg fired up the ol’ diesel and rolled down the windows. I ran half a bottle of contact solution over the lens, propped it on the end of my finger, and lifted it toward my eyeball, just as Greg turned onto the highway.

A breeze whipped through the cab, plucked the lens off my finger and flung it out the window.

I stared after it, stunned. Greg slammed on the brakes. But there was no way we were going to find a contact lens somewhere in a ten yard stretch of waist high grass. I had no spares along. Hadn’t bothered to even pack my out-dated glasses.

Thus began a mad scramble to find a replacement lens on a Sunday morining with three hours to go before rodeo time. In a town barely large enough to support two gas stations. The optometrist’s office was closed, of course, but God bless small towns, because the lady behind the counter in the convenience store happened to know the woman who worked for the eye doctor and called her at home and explained our predicament. And I—yes, the same person who yesterday did not recognize the guy who works at the auto body shop across the street from my office and whose Pepsi machine I regularly pump quarters into—I knew my contact lens prescription from memory. And they had one in stock.

One hour before rodeo time I was once again able to see out of both eyes. Not that it made me rope any better, but at least I felt like I had a fighting chance if I could actually locate the calf. Greg made an awesome run. Seven point eight seconds. Plus ten for the broken barrier. Sigh.

We, along with everyone else competing, blasted out of the parking lot for Dupree, ninety miles south. If we could maintain an average land speed of seventy miles an hour over the rolling hills, we’d make it with a minute or two to spare. The temperature had blown past ninety and was closing in on a hundred. Ol’ black was beginning to smell like a locker room full of sweaty hockey players. But at least there was air conditioning in the pickup.

“Oh, crap,” Greg said. Or something along those lines.

“What?”

“The pickup is overheating. I either have to slow down or turn off the air conditioner.”

Dupree is nothing but a hazy, sweat-logged blur. I think I may have caught my calf. I know I didn’t win anything. But finally, the Weekend from Hell was over. I peeled off old black, tossed it in a corner, and put on my short-sleeved pajama top. We pointed the pickup for home, but only as fast as we could go and still have air conditioning.

Two and a half days, five rodeos, nine hundred and fifty two miles. Zero dollars won. But hey, at least I didn’t have a big pile of laundry to wash the next day.. 

Indian Days

After two very long days of rodeo, I'm whupped, and too lazy to write a real blog post. Since a lot of my readers are also writers who ask questions about horse and rodeo stuff, I took a bunch of pictures that might help fill in the details when you're writing a western scene. Plus, I like to post pictures of as many family members and friends as possible, just for the embarrassment factor. And a few strangers who were just in the wrong place at the right time.

In my dreams.

TV crew interviewing our esteemed rodeo judge/singer of ceremonial Blackfeet songs

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Everybody loves a pickup man. 

Some serious BS-ing.

Begging candy money from Grandpa.

Won't be taking home a trophy saddle this year.

Bulldoggers in waiting. Don't mess with the guy in the brown hat. Dang, is he strong.

Not usually a big fan of Paint horses, but this one was nice. And fast.

Cowgirl style: yellow tutu, black boots, and dad wrapped around your finger.

Where all those tough Indian ropers come from. 

A little bling for the barrel horse. 

What rodeo people mean when they say 'booted up'.

It's That Time of Year Again...

No, not branding, or seeding, or even rodeo season. The fashion magazines tell me it's Swimsuit Season! (Apparently fashion magazines are produced in places where you don't consider thermal underwear to be a Fourth of July necessity).

Not quite ready to bare that ghostly, goose-pimpled flesh? I've got the cure: The Ranch Wife's Swimsuit Diet.

Give it a try. In no time, you'll be looking just like this:

Find this image and others at: PersonalizedSignShop.com

NightMares

My horses have attitude.

Not all of them. Just the good ones. Seems like the better they get in the arena, the more obnoxious they get outside. Sort of like most professional athletes.

It’s possible it could also be genetic. My last three rope horses have all been tough little Roan Hancock mares. Betsy…well, she deserves a blog post all her own. It’s impossible to do justice to her sheer contrariness in less than a thousand words. Suffice to say my sister once rode into the arena at a high school rodeo with Betsy packing a five foot long weed in her mouth because none of us was tough enough to get it away from her.

But she was also the best I’ve ever roped on.

I got Scotty when she was nine years old. She was supposedly broke. She bucked me off twice in the first week. The second time, I didn’t even get all the way into the saddle. As I swung on, she spun left toward me, threw me head first off the other side, and hung me up in the stirrup. Lucky I wasn’t wearing the wool socks that make my boots fit real tight or we might not being having this conversation.

She also made me a roper by letting me run twenty calves a day without ever cheating or overheating. When she turned twenty-two I gave her to friends and she made a roper out of their daughter Hallie, too. Last I heard, she’s training a new kid to mount up on the run.




Hallie and Scotty


Now there’s Ember. She’s Betsy’s daughter. Scotty’s niece. Sixteen years old, been hauled a zillion miles and roped on at nearly as many rodeos. Saturday, she wouldn’t get in the trailer to go to the rodeo in Standoff. She spooked at the sponsor signs on the arena fences. She balked when I tried to ride into the roping box.

Then she scored perfect and gave me a shot so sweet it still makes me want to cry that I missed it.



Given all that, is it any wonder I have the occasional rodeo-related nightmare? Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s the same dream. I’m at the rodeo and suddenly they’re calling my name to compete and I either can’t find my horse, or she’s still at the trailer which is parked half a mile from the arena, uphill both ways.

In the other version, I realize the rodeo is about to start, I’m still at home, and my horse refuses to be caught.

There are other nightmares, of course. Like the one where Scotty slams into the back of the roping box so hard she busts the fence and they have to stop the whole rodeo to fix it.

Oh, wait. That really happened.

Or there’s the one where I’m riding a young horse and it suddenly flips upside down in the roping box.

Oh, right. That was in Cottage Grove. But we did recover nicely and still win a check.

The worst nightmare is the one where my psychologically-challenged barrel horse plasters himself to the front of the bucking chutes and refuses to move while the announcer mumbles, "I'm sure she'll get him going any minute now." Then he does go--straight to the fence behind the first barrel, where he locks up again.

Come to think of it, that’s why we never went back to Clearfield.

After acquiring Scotty, Hallie developed her own set of bad dreams. Like the one where she was practicing her goat tying dismount at night on the racetrack at the Fort Pierre rodeo grounds, and when she stepped off Scotty locked up the brakes, pulled back, and tore off into the pitch black maze around the race horse barns as the announcer was declaring that it was now time for the goat tying to start.

That’s my Scotty. A living Night Mare

Postscript: At a writer's conference in Denver, I sat with a group of very non-rodeo women and learned that every athlete or performer seems to have their own version of my nightmare. The band members forgot their instrument. Or worse, their uniform. The sprinters were in the restroom when the starting gun went off for their race. And everybody seems to have had the "What do you mean we have a test today?" classroom dream. So what about you, blog readers? What's your recurring bad dream?

A Rope by Any Other Name

Considering I am the daughter of a roper, it seems odd I didn't start roping seriously until I was a sophomore in college. It had more to do with the lack of rodeos in our area that offered breakaway roping as an event than it did with my desire to be a roper. I'd turned plenty of steers in the practice pen for my dad so he could train heeling horses.

Then I got to college. After a few skid-on-my-chin incidents while dismounting in the goat tying (it never looked quite like this when I did it), I decided it made more sense to rope.

Of course, I made this decision three weeks into the season, which meant I wasn't quite as well-equipped as I might have been had I planned a little better. But what the heck, my barrel horse was great for heading steers, so I just used him despite the fact that he was a foot taller than the average calf horse and had a stop that once knocked the wind out me. I'd never roped enough calves to even own a rope. I just 'borrowed' my dad's old heading ropes.

So there I was at the big Montana State University spring college rodeo, sitting in the alley with the rest of the breakaway ropers, waiting to compete. One of the older girls looked at me, then at my raggy, fuzzed out nylon, and asked, "Where did you get that rope?"

"My dad gave it to me."

Her eyebrows raised. "Doesn't he like you?"

I went out the next week and bought a real calf rope.

Sounds simple. Stroll on down to Norman's Western Wear with me, though, and you'll be faced with something that looks like this:

Yeah, that's a lot of ropes, and they're all different. So I figured since some of you are as confused as I was on that first trip to the store, I'd give you a brief tutorial.

First, a little history. Pretty much every version of human civilization in history created some form of rope. Handy stuff for hauling wood and building rafts and tying martyrs to the stake for burning. They made it of whatever fiber they had at hand, mostly from plants, unless they had livestock to provide horse hair or strips of rawhide. No one knows for sure who was first to fashion rope into a lariat, except that it seems to be linked to the presence of horses.

Fast forward to the modern West. Rodeo came on the scene, bringing the need for strong, balanced ropes of consistent quality. Early rodeo ropes were made of grass. Yeah, that kind of grass. Hemp. Mar-i-juana.


Well, not quite, but a close relative. Industrial hemp plants grow much taller and produce a lot more fiber than the kind that regularly go up in smoke. Tough, stringy fiber that makes excellent rope when twisted into strands. Three or four strands are then twisted together to form a uniformly sized rope.

A chunk of rope becomes a lariat (which we shall from this point forward be calling a rope because no self respecting rodeo person owns a 'lariat' or 'lassoes' anything. We own ropes. We rope cattle. We do not lasso unless we are being sarcastic) with the addition of a hondo, which allows for the building of a loop. The modern version of ropes have three main components:

The horn knot is used only when roping calves in the arena, when you want the rope securely attached to the saddle. When pasture roping or team roping, the tail of the rope is left loose, then wrapped or 'dallied' around the saddle horn to stop or turn the critter once roped. This allows for easy release in case of emergency, which generally involves a mad cow under your horse's belly, or a rope tangled around your horse's leg or under his tail, which ups the excitement quotient by a fair amount since a rope under the tail is pretty much guaranteed to make most horses blow up and go to bucking. This is not a good time to be tied on hard and fast.

The saddle horn is wrapped in strips of rubber—in this case, cut from an old inner tube, which are getting increasingly hard to find since the advent of tubeless tires. Without the rubber, the rope slides and burns through your hand.

Though a huge improvement on braided ropes, grass ropes had issues. Natural fiber is very sensitive to heat, cold and moisture. Let it get too dry and a grass rope is like trying to swing and throw a really long piece of limp spaghetti. Too wet and it's the equivalent of that spaghetti if you leave the leftovers sitting out on the table overnight (not that I would ever do such thing). Grass ropes were also known to break. Not a good feeling, seeing the loose end of that rope come zinging back in your face. Like they say, it's all fun until somebody loses an eye.

Nowadays, rodeo ropes come in three main flavors: poly, nylon and poly-grass. Poly-grass is favored by calf ropers, who like the weight and feel of the natural fiber, but with polypropylene strands woven in to increase strength. Poly-grass ropes are high maintenance. Go to a rodeo and you'll see them on pickup hoods, baking in the sun to increase stiffness, in the shade under the pickup to 'limber them up', and stored in airtight cans to preserve the exact moisture content once achieved.

The white stuff in the can is baby powder. It makes the rope slicker so it 'feeds' more easily through the hondo. The white stuff outside the can needs no explanation.

Breakaway ropers prefer poly ropes. Cheaper, lower maintenance, more durable. Assuming you catch occasionally, a breakaway rope spends a lot of time dragging around on the ground behind the calf (like this.) You can rope a calf in the mud with a poly rope, hose it down, set it out to dry and it will recover. Do the same thing with a poly-grass, you might as well leave it at the catch pen, unless you need something to tie shut gates back at the ranch.

Team ropers want a stiffer rope, so they use nylon. Nylon ropes come in a million versions of stiffness and weight (and color, when it's the fashion), but the two main versions are heading and heeling ropes. Headers usually like a softer rope that will curl around the horns and come snug. Most heelers use a rope so stiff it's like swinging a hula-hoop because they want the loop to stay wide open in order to capture the steer's hind feet.

So, now you know more than you ever wanted or needed about ropes. Time to pack 'em up for the day and go eat.

A Bunch of Dummies

No, I'm not talking about us, although the way the weather's been lately you've got to wonder about the smarts of the people who choose to live out here.

This post is in response to a conversation on Twitter the other day, when one of the people I chat with online posted a picture of a roping dummy she built, and someone else said I should get one. I sat down and counted, and realized that we own nine roping dummies, not counting the table top version.

Roping is like any other sport. You don't learn to play basketball by jumping right into a full court game, and you don't learn to rope by jumping on a horse and going hell bent for leather after a calf. First, you have to master the basics. How to swing, how to throw, how to handle the slack so you don't end up tangling your horse in the rope with a calf on the other end.

To do that, you begin by standing on the ground, roping a dummy.

Roping dummies come in three basic varieties: calf roping dummies without horns, steer roping dummies with horns, and steer roping dummies with legs to practice heeling the hind feet.

Or, one dummy that can be either a calf or a steer. This is my college dummy. It's made of a section of six inch steel pipe. The legs come off so he can be stuffed in the tack room of your horse trailer. Or under your dorm room bed. Yes, that is a section of a radial tire. When you take the horns off, the tire becomes the calf head. We're not going to talk about how old this dummy is, or how many miles he's got under his treads.

However, throwing a loop while standing is a completely different experience than while seated in a saddle. Plus, for tie down ropers, there's the whole issue of learning to step off the right side of the horse after throwing (the opposite side of a normal dismount, for my non-horsey readers). That's why we have this guy:

(The white stuff is salt, we have to work it into the dirt every few years to keep the ground from freezing in the indoor arena.)

Next, it's time to learn to throw from the back of an actual horse. In order to learn under controlled conditions (i.e. without a calf running wild), some roping dummies are designed to be pulled along behind a horse or a four wheeler. This is one of my dad's designs. We call him Buford, though Johnny seems more appropriate since he's painted John Deere green.

My husband designed this dummy with the same concept in mind, except for calf roping. He built it out of race car tire and flattened one side so by bolting in a chunk of wood for a base. It's towed along on the sled and can either be tied on, or left loose so it rolls off when roped, mimicking what happens when a tie down roper catches a calf and gets off to tie it, while the horse keeps the rope tight. This is the dummy we use most when first getting a new horse used to tracking an animal and not spooking at the rope when it's swung and thrown.

Dad bought this dummy, which is really cool except I can't seem to get a rope around its 'neck' to save my life. It's also meant to be pulled. Notice the long, curving rails. Once you catch it and the rope comes tight, it rocks back until the rope pops off the front, then drops back down to be roped again. No getting off to retrieve your rope. Another excellent training tool for beginning ropers or horses.

If you don't have the money or the space for a full roping dummy, there's always the option of just buying a head that's mounted on steel spikes that can be stuck in to a hay bale. Most are molded, high impact plastic, like the calf head on the right. Our steer head is slightly more authentic, although a tad lopsided since the bulls got into the indoor arena and stomped around.

Not all dummies are for roping. Some are for tying:

So, with all those options, it's only natural that people ask what I rope when I'm fine tuning my loop. And the answer is...none of the above. I prefer to rope the plain old hay bale.

Addendum: Since posting this blog I've had several inquiries about the white Calf Tracker dummy in the middle picture. We've had it since I was in high school so I had no idea where it came from, but when I said so to my husband he not only knew, he'd met and chatted with Don Parsons, the man who makes them. Don is from Walla Walla, WA, I don't have a number or address but I did find a great newspaper article about his business:  http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920308&slug=1479808