The Life of Bodacious: Fear or Be Feared

The huge size and fierce appearance of a bull makes him the perfect target for animal abusers. Rodeos know they can fool many people into believing that the bull is impervious to pain. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the early 1990s, a rodeo bull named Bodacious, through the torment and indignities heaped upon him by rodeo people, came to show the true nature of this abusive industry.

Rodeo animals are tame, domesticated animals who act rank or mean only when incited. When rodeo people victimize them; taunt, torment, beat and torture them, these animals are, for the most part, frantically trying to get out of the arena at the earliest opportunity. The same is even true for so-called "fighting" bulls in bullfighting. Animals in rodeos and bullfights don't want trouble, they simply wish to be left alone. In the case of these animal victims, their reaction is much the same as yours or mine would be to an unprovoked attack – we try to defend ourselves and escape undeserved punishment.

Bodacious the rodeo bull also wanted no trouble with anyone, but when someone did torment him, he figured out that the best defense was a good offense. Bodacious got a handle on the rodeos, and the people involved in them. They could force him into the filthy livestock trucks and haul him and his fellow victims for days only to be forced into a little holding pen outside the rodeo arena for hours, often in the hot sun or cold rain. The abusers could force him into the bucking chute with electric prods. But once the chute gate opened up, Bodacious figured out how to take control.

This bull's expression says it all. At the moment of this photo he was being shocked with 5,000 volts of electricity seconds before the chute opened.

The young bull developed some moves that turned the tables on rodeo contestants. He would sling his head back and forth, which rodeo riders hate because of the danger of being hit by the horns. Bodacious would pitch his rider forward, only to then throw his head up to slam the rider in the head – often the face. He started messing some people up, including one contestant named Tuff (don’t you just love some of these names?) Hedeman. He smashed Hedeman’s face but good, just like Humpty Dumpty, and all of Tuff’s doctors and all of Tuff’s plastic surgeons were just barely able to put Tuff’s face together again.

The rodeo folks called Bodacious "The World's Most Dangerous Bull," and for a change, it seemed that they weren’t just hyping.

Now if all the stories about the courage of rodeo contestants had any truth to it at all, you would think these guys would have been lining up around the block to take on Bodacious. It was time for our “brave boys” in their ridiculous John Wayne Halloween costumes to “cowboy up” and “git’er done” and “bite the bullet.” Now the rodeo people had a real chance to show what they were made of – and that’s just what they did – in the true tradition of rodeo anti-climax – by retiring Bodacious.

You see, all the talk of dangerous bulls and tough guys riding them is just hype. Cowboy wannabes don’t want “dangerous animals” who are actually dangerous – someone might get hurt! When the rodeo people realized that this bull knew how to play the game of rodeo, they said “FORGET THAT!” Bye-bye Bodacious, no more rodeo cowboys for you to play with and turn the tables on.

An example of one of the repugnant attempts to make every last dime from the life of Bodacious.

Bodacious’ life as a rodeo contestant ass-whipper was over, but the rodeo world wasn’t through with him yet. Unwilling to allow any animal to simply live out his life without being somehow dominated, used and profited from, Bodacious’ owner carted him around where the people of rodeo would gawk and “ooh and ahh” at him. They would imagine what it would be like to have his power, poise and dignity. When SHARK learned that Bodacious was being displayed at a casino in Las Vegas in the late 1990s during the National Finals Rodeo, SHARK President, Steve Hindi hopped a plane. Steve was there to protest rodeo animal abuse, and to debate anyone fool enough to try to defend it.

The site of this captive bull was sad and disgusting. Here he was again, stuck in a little pen, again surrounded by the pitiful “men” of rodeo.

Left alone, Bodacious and other rodeo bulls have no desire to cause trouble for anyone, and he showed that as he was taken from place to place to be ogled by phony cowboys. It is only because of the cruelty and injustices heaped upon them that rodeo victims fight in the arena. Rodeo animals fight for their freedom, just as you or I would.

In 2000, Bodacious died, of heart failure they said. Perhaps he was just tired of living with people who represent the armpit of humanity. Finally the rodeo people could dominate him no further, at least not in life.

Still, his legend lives on by the people who wanted to dominate him. They sell T-shirts, videos, pictures and anything else they can connect to him. Like consummate parasites, they cling to, feed on and live off his memory.

From a concealed position, this rodeo thug is seen pulling a shocking device. Typically it is bulls who receive the worst abuse from electric shocking in rodeos. Cattle are particularly sensitive to electricity, and rodeo animal abusers use that to their advantage to make calm, docile bulls appear to be wild killers.

Although small, the electric prod delivers 5,000 volts of extreme pain. Rodeo animal abusers often shock their victims repeatedly before releasing them, driving them wild with torment. SHARK offers money to rodeo people to take a shock from the same device they use on their victims. These supposedly macho "cowboys" always refuse!

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's (PRCA) "humane rules" prohibit the shocking of a bull in a chute, but those rules are for public relations purposes only. The routine shocking of bulls and horses in the chutes is inherent, widespread, and well-documented in PRCA rodeos, and indeed all rodeos.

What does a Former Bronc Rider and Rodeo Veterinarian Have To Say?

An Interview with Peggy Larson, DVM, MS, JD

Dr. Peggy Larson has a more varied background in the veterinary profession than most can claim. She is the founder of the National Spay and Neuter Coalition and operates a low- cost spay and neuter clinic with her husband, who is also a veterinarian.

As a former veterinary medical officer with the United States Department of Agriculture, she participated in animal welfare inspections. She has also worked as a Vermont State Veterinarian and Chief of Livestock and Meat Inspection, has sat on an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, is a pathology and computer specialist, and has practiced institutional and large animal medicine.

While working in private practice, she once cared for animals used in rodeos and was also a rodeo participant. As a former rodeo bareback bronco rider and former large animal veterinarian, Dr. Larson has witnessed first-hand the damage done to these animals.

Subsequently, she is now working to ban calf roping and steer “busting” and is also an international media consultant on rodeo issues. 

Dr. Larson was interviewed by the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights (AVAR)

AVAR: What made you decide to challenge rodeo practices?

AVAR: What kinds of animal injuries have you witnessed at rodeo events?

AVAR: Last year, you approached the American Veterinary Medical Association's Animal Welfare Committee (AVMA-AWC) to adopt a position statement on rodeo but were unsuccessful. Do you see the AVMA ever taking a stand against using animals in such a brutal and degrading way or even opposing the most abusive of rodeo practices?

AVAR: Many localities now ban rodeo or have restrictions on it. Do you think this is a sign of a positive shift in public attitude away from violent entertainment?

AVAR: What can veterinarians do to help animals when rodeo events are scheduled in their area?

Please contact the AVMAW:

Email here.

or write:

American Veterinary Medical Association’s Animal Welfare Committee
1931 N. Meacham Road, Suite 100
Schaumburg, IL 60173- 4360.

Ask that the AVMA amend their position statement on the Welfare of Animals in Spectator Events to, at the very least, oppose calf roping and steer busting events. Also, please ask that they withdraw their endorsement of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy’s Association animal welfare guidelines. 

Reprinted with Permission from AVAR Directions: Winter 2002, the newsletter of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights. AVAR is “committed to balancing the needs of nonhuman animals with those of human animals."

Gallup Poll Exposes Rodeo's Ruse

In the fifteen years that SHARK has investigated and exposed the cruelty of the rodeo mafia, we can’t begin to count all the times we had to sit quietly in the stands and endure blustering and blathering rodeo announcers go on about how popular rodeos are. To listen to these professional liars, rodeos are “what’s happening” “the next breakout sport,” and blah, blah, blah. It’s all so juvenile, and shows their insecurity. Rodeo fanatics have been claiming that their cruel and idiotic spectacle is the “next breakout sport” for as long as rodeos have been around.

Lazy/sellout reporters devoid of journalistic integrity have done their best to perpetuate the myth by parroting the rodeo mafia’s propaganda. SHARK’s MediaVillains.com website has a few examples of the kind of media phonies that partner with the rodeo mafia. The goofiest part of these nonsensical claims is that so often when the silliness is being spewed, the rodeo stands are mostly barren. Nevertheless, the reality of the situation seems to have little effect on the morons who attend rodeos, and who apparently want so desperately to believe that they are part of something relevant, as opposed to a small, fringe group of misfits who are the butt of jokes for the rest of society – the folks who have active brain cells. 

Now, however, rodeo thugs have gotten a very bitter dose of reality thrown at them from none other than the highly respected Gallup polling company. The December 11-14, 2006 poll asked Americans to identify, without prompting, their “favorite sport to watch.” The results show in painful detail just how insignificant rodeos are. 

The majority of respondents of the poll, released January 19, 2007, chose the obvious legitimate sports that you would expect: football (43%), basketball (12%) and baseball (11%). Then respondents chose auto racing (4%), golf (3%), ice/figure skating (3%), soccer (2%), ice hockey (2%), boxing (2%), tennis (1%) and gymnastics (1%). Three percent of respondents chose “other” as their favorite sport, and twelve percent said they had no favorite sport. See the Gallup poll here.

So where did rodeo rank among these most popular sports? It didn’t! Imagine that – the rodeo people have been lying about their status as a supposed sport! Who woulda guessed? But wait, cause this expose’ still gets better. Gallup also broke their responses down by age, gender and geographic regions of the US, so in effect, rodeo has multiple opportunities to show strength in at least a small portion of the sports market. For instance, if we were to believe even a tiny bit of rodeo propaganda, we would find rodeos to be a significant activity in the west, right? But, no! It didn’t show up. Perhaps since rodeos are a predominantly a man’s sport, it’ll show up in the gender breakdown, right? Wrong again! How about in the age breakdown, since rodeo is for the young, right? No! How about older sports fans? Forget about it! There was no mention of rodeo. 

The poll also included some historical information about the popularity of sporting events from 1994 to 2006. In four of those years rodeo managed to scrape up a one percent rating, but for 2006 rodeo noticeably declined, not even able to make it up to 0.5%. The closest activity rodeo could be compared to in popularity was volleyball – that’s right – volleyball! But at least volleyball is a real sport.

Finally, Gallup included information of the long-term trend of sports popularity, starting way back in 1937, up to 2006. Once again, rodeo was a no-show. 

The real beauty of this poll is that it didn’t exclude rodeo, even though rodeo can’t be considered a legitimate sport. Rodeo had a shot to prove itself, and as usual, the rodeo mafia was proven to be lying. 

Gallup's results show why rodeo is barely hanging on to its existence. Plagued by constant exposure from animal advocacy groups like SHARK, attendance is faltering and sponsors (Campbell Soup’s Pace Foods, Starbucks, and others) are pulling out, the rodeo industry's in trouble and they know it. The [now former] head of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) has admitted to being a liar, a cheat, and pled guilty to 4 felony charges, and attendance remains dismal at many rodeos and at the PRCA’s “Hall of Fame” at its Colorado Springs, Colorado headquarters.

Recently, hard-hitting journalists have shown the public the pervasive abuse and corruption at major rodeo events in Wyoming and Illinois. Finally, the International Pro Rodeo Association (IPRA), the world’s second largest rodeo association, barely escaped going out of existence recently, and was bought for a song by some former, apparently disgruntled PRCA folks. That simply means that the zombies are going to try to resuscitate the dead. 

The following is an excerpt from the article posted on RodeoAttitude.com, a pro-rodeo web site. When even the rodeo fanatics make this kind of admission, you know things are really bad: 

“Recently rumors had spread throughout the rodeo industry that the IPRA, which began in 1957 in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, was in financial trouble and on the verge of dissolving.”

But there’s even more information pointing to the problems faced by rodeo thugs, and it is to be found within the files of none other than the rodeo mafia itself, on the web site of the Reno rodeo. It’s a list of PRCA statistics from 1953 to 2004, over a half-century of information. As we said earlier, when even the rodeo people acknowledge this, it is a serious matter. 

According to the PRCA’s own information, in 1953 there were 578 PRCA-sanctioned rodeos, while the number in 2004 was 671, or an increase of sixteen percent. Comparatively, the American population rose from 160,184,000 in 1953, to 293,027,571 in 2004. That’s a jump of more than 83 percent. (US Census Bureau international Database, www.census.gov) Obviously rodeos are not keeping up with the population of the US – a clear indication that rodeo popularity is dropping. In 2013, the total number of PRCA rodeos has continued to drop to about 600.

So rodeo, a fringe activity at best in the beginning, is steadily losing any place in American society, and is basically considered to be even less legitimate than professional wrestling. 

Here’s the truly appalling portion of the story. Although rodeo is a joke when it comes to public interest, rodeo prize money has skyrocketed from $2,492,856 to a whopping $35,532,631, or more than a fourteen-fold increase! If we have to give kudos to one part of the rodeo mafia, it’s the marketing department – for they are hands down the best snake oil salespeople in the world! They’re selling multinational corporations a bill of goods that, were it not for the cruelty of rodeo, would be hilarious! This phenomenon is especially wacky given that some of the companies like Dodge Trucks and Ford Motor Company have enormous financial problems. Nevertheless, these struggling companies are pouring millions of dollars into the rodeo mafia even as they are laying off their workers and posting record losses.

As you can see there is both good and bad news in all of this. The good news is that this is a battle that can and must be won. The fact is that most Americans see rodeo for just what it is – a stupid activity, whose entertainment value is akin to watching Jello harden. 

We are still in the process of educating people as to the inherent cruelty of rodeos, and when we have achieved more success in that area, the demise of the rodeo mafia among thinking people will be assured.

That bad news is that there are still untold numbers of rodeos animals abused, maimed, and killed every year in rodeos, and this abuse is being funded by corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola and Dodge Trucks. This demonstrates the importance that caring people NOT give these abusive and corrupt companies so much as a penny of your money. Every call you make via AT&T/Cingular/SBC is money going to the rodeo mafia. Every Coke product you purchase is money that will be used to abuse animals. Please remember that.

Hopefully the exposed lies of the rodeo mafia and your consumer voice will help persuade the corporate morons who sponsor rodeos to stop propping up this excuse for entertainment.

Locations with Prohibitions or Restrictions on Rodeos or Rodeo Events

"Tradition should never serve as an excuse for cruelty."

Some towns, cities, states, and countries have realized that rodeos belong to the Dark Ages, and have made moves to eliminate or restrict this cruel, needless excuse for entertainment. Rodeo propagandists like to claim that their industry is a "true American sport", but this listing shows that people all across America are rejecting rodeo's abuse.

Below is a partial listing, as more and more places realize every year that rodeo's victims deserve protection. Alert your local authorities if you find any of these laws being violated in your area!

Within the United States

• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has exposed the sham of rodeo by banning their 'tools of torture'. By prohibiting the use of electric prods, shocking devices, flank or bucking straps, wire tie-downs, sharpened or fixed spurs, and rowels in rodeos, the rodeos can't force the animals to 'perform'. Pittsburgh is a blackout city for rodeos and their cruelty.
• Leestown, Virginia has also effectively banned rodeo by restricting the use of flank straps, electric prods and spurs.
• San Francisco, California prohibits rodeos.
• Nevada prohibits steer roping. Nevada's state veterinarian says steer roping causes animals to get "hurt too often".
• Pasadena, California prohibits rodeos.
• Alameda County, California a veterinarian must be present at the rodeo.
• State of Ohio bans use of flank straps.
• California prohibits the use of electric prods once an animal is in the chute.
• In California a written reports of animal injuries must be submitted to the California State Veterinary Medical Board within 48 hours of the conclusion of the rodeo.
• Rhode Island and California require a veterinarian present at every rodeo.
• Southampton, New York effectively bans rodeos by prohibiting the use of electric prods or shocking devices, flank or bucking straps, wire tie-downs, sharpened spurs, bull hooks and bullwhips at rodeos.
• Baltimore County, Maryland prohibits calf roping
• Montgomery, New Jersey bans the use of electric prods at the annual rodeo.
• Rhode Island prohibits all calf roping except breakaway roping, thus also resulting in steer roping being illegal.
• Baltimore, Maryland prohibits use of spurs in rodeos.
• Napa County, California prohibits rodeos.
• Fort Wayne, Indiana prohibits rodeos.
• St. Petersburg, Florida prohibits rodeos.
• Greenburgh, New York prohibits rodeos on town property.
• St. Charles, Illinois prohibits the use of electric prods once the animal is in the holding chute.

Outside the United States 

• The United Kingdom prohibits rodeos.
• Australia's Capitol Territories prohibit rodeos.
• Auckland, New Zealand, the country's largest city, prohibits rodeos on Council-owned land.
• Germany prohibits calf roping.
• Vancouver, Canada prohibits calf roping.
• Cloverdale Rodeo in British Columbia, Canada banned calf roping, team roping, cowboy cow milking and steer wrestling.
• State of South Australia and Victoria, Australia have eliminated the "sport" roping of small animals (calves, goats, etc.) by a requiring animals to weigh at least 200 kg.
• Bauru, Arealva, and Avai, Brazil, ban electric prods, flank straps, and spurs.
• Santo André, São Caetano, Franca, and Diadema in São Paulo, Brazil, prohibit rodeos.
• The Netherlands has banned the USA rodeo.

Know of a caring community we missed? Drop us a note so we can add them to the list at: info@sharkonline.org