cowboy college

In search of lost doggies.

It’s graduation day at Arizona Cowboy College. In order to get our diplomas, we need to ride out into the desert to help George, a 75-year-old rancher and neighbor, round up a dozen or so meandering cows. The day is hot and the ride through prickly cholla and scratchy mesquite dangerous.

We ride for hours, up and down drywashes looking for strays snoozing beneath the shade of some scrub. Viejo knows exactly what he’s doing. Me, less so. But Viejo and I have now come to an arrangement: I just let him do what he’s good at and don’t bother him too much.

I spot a cow and give the Old Cowboy the gentlest of nudges and he canters off, picking his way through the desert with no help from me, herding the lost doggy back into the fold. Together Viejo and I find five lost cows and head them back safely to George’s ranch.

By the end of the afternoon, my muscles ache, my skin is chaffed, and my eyes are dry and red. But I’ll tell you what—when Rocco hands me my Cowboy U diploma, I feel like John Wayne.

I’m trying to figure out what it is about horses but I’m not there yet.

About a month ago I wrote about a Jeep tour I took in Sedona. It was a vortex tour, a vortex being a “giant magnet of energy that is either positive or negatively charged. Positive charged vortexes have feminine attributes: nurturing, calming and tranquil or yin. Negative vortexes are masculine, active, energizing or yang.”

That’s from the website of the Sedona Vortex Tours company.

Anyway, my vortex guide, who wore a black hat with a rattlesnake skin around the crown, was a guy from Minnesota who used to own a Dairy Queen. There were a lot of people in Sedona like that.

Anyway, let’s get back to the Arizona Cowboy College. I’ve been thinking all week that Rocco is an odd name for a cowboy, even if that cowboy is the most macho vaquero since Clint Eastwood saddled up a pony in The Unforgiven. So I asked Rocco about it.

As it turns out, Rocco used to be a grocer in New York. I guess he had a bit of a mid-life crisis and decided to move to Scottsdale in the early 80s. “I loved the desert and I have a passion for horses,” he said. “I decided what I wanted to do was to get people who did not know much about horses to appreciate them. If I can get one more kid, one more adult, five more people to just get it about horses, I’m a happy man.”

Well, I don’t know if I get it about horses yet. But I’m getting closer.

Yesterday at Cowboy College, Rocco showed us how to swirl a lasso over our heads and, using a dummy cow on wheels, rope a steer. It’s an odd thing, twirling a lasso. You either get the feel for it pretty quickly or you don’t. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with how good of a horseman or athlete you are. The most natural cowboy out here just could not make that lasso do what another fella who still hasn’t figured out how to properly put on a saddle could.

I’ve got to admit, I wasn’t half bad. When it came time to try it out on some live cows, Rocco had me go first. And I nailed that lil’ doggie on the first try.

I’m starting to like this cowboy business. As long as I can stay off my horse.

I rode around the ring clockwise and then, on Rocco’s command, I reversed Viejo and rode counter-clockwise, and then we cantered a bit, me getting the feel of Viejo and him getting used to someone other than Rocco giving him commands. There were some 50-gallon barrels a few yards apart down at the end of the ring and Rocco said anyone who was of a mind could gallop down there, turn their horse around the barrels, and gallop back. A young cowboy showed us how to do it. He was all grace and effortless motion, horse and rider a thing of beauty.

Right up until that moment, I had absolutely no intention of taking Viejo for a gallop. But watching this young cowboy made me change my mind.

I made a little clicking noise and gave Viejo a light kick and he went tearing for those barrels like a freight train on a downhill track. I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid. I held the reigns tight and used my legs to squeeze Viejo with all my might, bouncing around in the saddle like a sack of potatoes on the back of a tractor. In other words, I did everything wrong. I was afraid that Viejo would run right past the barrels and into the fence, but at least one of us knew what he was doing.

I began to ease up on the reigns, focusing on moving with the horse instead of against him, and by the time I pulled Viejo up short in front of Rocco, you’d swear I’d been a cowboy all my life. Sort of.