RIDING THE RODEO WAVE
Sport like family and all about passion
Ask anyone in rodeo and they’d be quick to tell you they’re part of a big family.
From rivalries and relationships to roller-coaster triumphs and tragedies, the vast array of participants in the historic sport share a level of kinship that’s difficult for some to comprehend.
“It honestly is a huge family,” Katie Garthwaite, a professional barrel racer who calls Merritt home, says.
“You spend so many hours behind a wheel and days travelling, and then you show up on a weekend and it’s pretty much the same people pretty much everywhere you go.”
But it’s more than just a timeand-place connection, or even a shared passion, that connects this rodeo family.
“Living in pro rodeo is living in a world where, if you see a truck and trailer pulled over and they have their hazard lights on, you pull over and make sure they’re OK. Or help change a tire,” Garthwaite says. “It’s those kind of people. Everyone is always helping everybody out.
“It’s a very special world.” That bond branches all the way from the rowdy cowboys and cowgirls, to the office administration and announcers, and, yes, even to the animal athletes, too.
“It’s a bond to be able to be with them,” she says of the connection riders have to their mounts.
“Not every horse is going to make a great barrel horse. They’re hard to find, and when you do find one, they’re special.
“You have to have a pretty great connection.”
Garthwaite, who has worked as a stuntwoman on the set of several major films, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Revenant, says that bond between horse and rider is something rodeo riders often try to pass on to their kids.
“My good mare that I have done well on, I call her Frenchie ... she’s 14 this year,” she explains of the palomino horse she’s found much success riding over the years,
which recently had surgery for chips in her knee.
“I’m basically trying to get her healthy to where my daughter will be able to ride her.”
Garthwaite is happy to share her passion for rodeo with her 10-yearold daughter, who competes in Little Britches Rodeo events, as well as soccer and jiu-jitsu.
“I would way rather my kid ride her horse, be at the barn and be involved with riding lessons and learning about responsibilities rather than sitting at home on her phone, watching TV or playing video games,” she says of the draw of the sport.
“It’s a great way to teach someone how to have a work ethic.”
But it’s not just timed-event riders that care for their animal competitors.
Rough-stock riders and stock contractors, the outfits that provide the horses and bulls for events like bull riding and saddle bronc riding, often go to extreme measures to care for their animals, according to Garthwaite.
“People don’t realize that stock contractors will pay five-, six-digit prices for a good bucking horse. And those bucking horses are treated better than most people’s pets. It’s crazy,” she says.
“I’ve seen them run the bucking horses into the chutes and they do acupuncture on them.
“They take such great care of their animals.”
But not everyone agrees. Rodeos have long been a target of animal-welfare groups, with protests surrounding pro rodeo dating to the 1870s.
Today, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the circuit under which most pro-rodeo competitors compete, has more than 60 rules to “ensure the proper care and treatment of rodeo animals” in its official regulations, according to the association’s website.
Much like horses competing at the international level under the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, all animals have to be evaluated for issues such as illness, stress, weight and injury by a veterinarian before and during the often multi-day competitions.
Throughout the years, animalwelfare agencies have prodded the various associations to continually update their standards.
For example, it’s now required that all rough stock wear fleece, neoprene-lined or soft-cotton straps and riggings, and the steers used in roping events are required to wear protective horn coverings.
“Animal welfare is a major ongoing initiative of the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association and we pledge to continue the strict enforcement of our rules and regulations,” the CPRA says on its website.
Rodeo competitors are quick to point out that animal welfare is a primary concern for everyone.
“The best way I can put it is, when I die, I’d like to come back as a bucking horse,” Clay Elliott, a saddle-bronc rider, says with a laugh.
Healthy animals not only impact the overall competition, and thus the outcome of a rider’s success, it’s a priority to rodeo competitors who are, above all, “horse-and-cow” people.
“Everything I do comes down to rodeo. Being a rodeo cowboy, you spend a lot of time on the road. So, you look forward to the time when you can come home and ride your own saddle horses and see your own cows,” Elliott says.
“I love everything there is to being a cowboy, whether that’s riding saddle horses or bucking horses.”
The Vernon native, who now calls Nanton, Alta., home, regularly travels to more than 120 rodeos across North America each year, so he comes across most of the animals on the pro-rodeo circuit.
“There are damn sure some good ones out there,” Elliott says of the horses he comes across. “But, there are getting to be so many good ones that you go to a rodeo now and it’s almost hard to draw a bad one.”
In this rodeo family, the animals are often as beloved — and celebrated — as the human competitors.
Type the names “Redrock,” “Bodacious,” “Little Yellow Jacket,” “Papa Smurf” and “Grated Coconut” married with term “rodeo” in an online search and you’re bound to find a fair share of articles and fan pages dedicated to these various equine and bovine rodeo stars.
But the cowboys and cowgirls are a big draw too, of course.
The closeness of the rodeo world was tragically thrust into the mainstream earlier this year with the tragic passing of B.C.’s own cowboy superstar, Ty Pozzobon.
The pro bull rider was a beloved member of the rodeo world, stepping into the role of role model and star long before his passing at age 25.
“There are those people who’ve won championships and had their names here and there. And they’ve been around,” Garthwaite says of the near-Hollywood-level celebrity of select rodeo cowboys and cowgirls.
“Most of those people have worked from the bottom up and they know what it takes to work your way up. And most of those people are great people who want to see other people succeed and do well. So, they lend a hand and encourage.
“Ty Pozzobon was that person. He was always there for the little kids and he became this huge hero.”