Cowboy up? Cowboy down
April 09, 2004
universitydaily.net
by Angela Timmons:
My dad, from a small town outside of Matador (near Childress), used to ride bulls. So did other members of my extended family.
When my parents moved to Amarillo from New York in 2001, I knew Texas would be a bit of a culture shock. It wasn't all that bad, as I was already accustomed to my father's West Texas ways: the slow drawl and random farm animal noises he regularly enlisted to entertain my northern friends.
Cowboy hats and drawls I could handle. There was, however, one thing I refused to embrace, no matter how many times my parents begged me to: the rodeo.
A Washington Post article on April 7 touted bull riding, only one of several rodeo sports, as "America's original extreme sport." In this day and age of dangerous and extreme sports, Americans are apparently saddling up to their televisions to watch "men" engage in the most dangerous eight seconds of their lives. The Post reported Nielsen ratings that show bull riding now brings in more viewers than NBA games.
This past weekend this hit close to home when the ABC Rodeo bucked into the Lubbock Coliseum. The mere presence of the rodeo was painful for me. But it is the pain the animals endure that concerns me beyond what I can explain in this column.
Driving to work one rainy, windy day this past weekend, I passed horses tied up to trucks, just standing there in the rain, dangerously close to Brownfield Highway traffic. I knew then I had to learn more about rodeo abuses.
"Awe, it doesn't hurt 'em," is a statement several of my relatives in the area have used to convince me that rodeo sports are not harmful to animals.
I'm not convinced.
Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), an organization that investigates animal cruelty, found alarming and heart breaking videos of rodeo abuses throughout the nation. SHARK, at www.sharkonline.org, provides videos and a long list of documented occasions when the horror of rodeo abuse was found.
What are a few of these horrors?
Calf Roping
I remember seeing calf roping on television when I was very young; I have refused to view it willingly since, and the image still haunts me. The words to describe how ridiculous this particular sport is escapes me.
Roping calves are typically three to four months old - mere babies. These babies are repeatedly subjected to acts of cruelty: they are violently roped, normally becoming airborne, and slammed into the ground. Then, the rodeo contestant picks the baby up and slams it on the ground again, and ties up its tiny legs. All the while, its neck is squeezed by the rope tightly circling it.
As SHARK states, if this were done to cats or dogs the same young age as these calves, the offender would probably face charges.
But calf ropers get to perform their atrocities on television and in front of screaming fans.
Last I checked, the Lubbock Coliseum and other rodeo arenas aren't "out on the ranch" where runaway calves are roped to stay with the crew and not for cruel amusement.
Any man (or woman, as the case may be) who uses calf roping to prove masculinity is no man at all. They're not even human.
Tail Twisting, Pulling, and Raking
This was an aspect of rodeo sports I had to look into because I had never heard of it. This involves the raking, pulling or twisting of one of an animal's most sensitive body parts: its tail. The pulling, twisting and raking are done to make calves and steers run chaotically from their enclosed chutes. SHARK caught rodeo contestants, even in the Olympic rodeo of 2002, using these methods to agitate the animals and make them more hostile.
Now, let me ask you something, cowboys: if someone yanked the most sensitive part of your body - your penis - over a fence, would you become hostile too? Probably. But not to worry - you would soon forget about your anguish when someone came along to slam you down on the ground while you were still in pain, tie up your hands and feet, and throw you around a few more times. Then you would be defenseless and in so much pain, you might just stop breathing. You would probably suffer a few broken bones and torn muscles, and maybe even die.
All in the name of sport.
Beating
While probably fairly uncommon in televised rodeos, a SHARK investigator documented a rodeo horse named Cinnebar being beaten to make the animal buck when it initially refused to. Cinnebar was kicked and punched, slapped and had his ears pulled. He was even kicked in the face.
Shocking
Another discovery for me was the use of electric prods in rodeos, which send about 5,000 volts of painful shocks into the animals. These prods are used to make the animals buck and run, contorting their bodies into the unnatural forms we often see flailing through rodeo arenas.
Shocking just made rodeo cruelty all the more shocking to me.
Disturbing
I do not have room to discuss all the exploits of rodeo cruelty. At SHARK's Web site, anybody can view numerous videos documenting cruelty the investigators have captured. But people should not need videos to convince them of the cruelty involved in this "sport." This is not a sport - this is sanctioned abuse. Animals are defenseless - even the largest, most powerful animals are defenseless to the cruel mechanisms designed by humans.
Humans are the real danger here. That anyone would consciously harm an innocent, living creature is unthinkable. How did such unspeakable abuse ever become OK?
If Americans want to watch "extreme" sports, let's cut out the rodeo and let humans beat the hell out of each other. At least then they'd be picking on someone their own size.
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