PETA denounces rodeo as cruel

PETA has been trying to put a stop to rodeo for many years now. They believe that the animals used in rodeo are cruelly abused and none of them treated fairly. I found an article on their website that cites various instances where animals were hurt or killed during rodeo events. Buck The Rodeo is just one harsh critic of rodeo. I am not saying that animals are not injured in the sport, but I do think that PETA sometimes blows things out of proportion. There will always be people that abuse animals and those peopl do need to be stopped, but PETA also needs to realize that many people in the sport of rodeo love there animals and take care of them as if they were a member of the family. For many people rodeo is their main income and could not afford harming their animals even if they were inclined to. I believe that there are two sides to every story, but people should actually educate themselves on both sides of the issue before making a harsh judgement call as PETA does in the above article.

Isn't Rodeo supposed to be fair and unbiased?

I had a beef this weekend with a judge at a church rodeo that I attended. The rules were that you had to catch your calf "bell collar" which means that the rope has to be snug around the neck when it breaks off the saddle horn. I roped my calf and was 2.3 which was winning the round by 3 tenths of a second. As I was following my calf out of the arena the judge waved me out and said I had a no time. I asked him what I had done and he said that I had roped a front leg, which according to the rules is illegal. At first I just said ok because it has happened to me before even though I am pretty good at noticing when I roped a leg and didn't think I did it this time. When I rode to the chutes to get my rope I asked the guys taking ropes off if the rope was around the calves leg. They looked puzzled and said no it was a clean catch. Three different men said this to me. I went straight to the judge and told him what the men had said and he said "Well, it was around the leg when it broke off". That would be a legitimate answer except it is difficult for a rope to come off a leg when it has been roped and come up tight around the neck by the time the calf gets to the end of the arena.

My beef with this whole episode is that I was at a church roping. I was almost expecting something of this nature to happen, as I had problems with the family who ran the roping and was worried that something underhanded may happen. Turns out I was right. What makes it worse is that this was a CHURCh roping, where there is supposed to be less bias and greediness than is usually present at this roping. Another problem I had at this roping was the rules were if you came to the church service in the morning you go to rope fro free. I had no problem with that as it saved me money. My problem is that I saw at least 5 people that got to rope and were not at the church service. One of the participants was a particular friend of the family running the roping which struck me as biased behavior. If I had to go to a church service (and I particularly don't like them) then everyone should have had to go. It's not fair to the rest of us who waited around for 7 hours to rope in the heat.

This is a problem I have had with rodeo for a while. It is supposed to a very unbiased sport, with luck playing a large part in how people do. I love the sport for that reason. But when people do things like this it makes me said for the sport and angry that people feel the need to cheat so that they can win. What's worse in my opinion is that this sort of thing happened at a CHURCH roping, where just a few hours earlier they were preaching that material things are not necessary and that we should all love each other and help each other out.

Hypocritical bull$h!t if you ask me.

Scandal touches one of the darlings of rodeo

Trevor Brazile is well-known for being an amazing calf and steer roper and an all-around good guy. He has won numerous national awards and has been one of the best calf ropers this past decade. Unfortunately scandal has touched the family of this golden boy. I found an article that concerns Trevor's father, Jimmy Brazile. He has been arrested and accused of assaulting a teenage girl that he was helping to learn how to rope. This article was found on a non profit website called SHARK. The details of the ongoing assult, and it was ongoing for more than a year, are present in the article. This goes to show that even though there are stereotypes that cowboys are just good ol' boys that get a little rowdy, there are dangerous people that come in all shapes and sizes. This is one of the last men anyone would expect to behave in this matter, and yet it seems Jimmy had no regard for the illegality of what he was doing with this teenage girl. To further verify this story I found an article from the Wise County Messenger that reported the same incident with basically the same details as SHARK. Some of the content has been changed from when I first found this article due to reader complaints of the graphic language used in the original article.

Texas A&M Rodeo Team

In local news, the Texas A&M Rodeo Team has had many local articles written concerning the various champions that have participated. I will hyperlink the articles that I have found that pertain to the rodeo team. I think these articles highlight how hard rodeo athletes must work to maintain school work at Texas A&M as well as holding jobs and rodeoing on the weekend. Many people don't realize the time and effort it takes to be successful at rodeo. Hopefullly these articles will shed some light on these relatively unknown athletes. I found an article on TexAgs.com that sent me to the Texas A&M Foundation page. This article called "Spurred to Success" was taken out of a larger article in SPIRIT magazine. Click here to read the full article "Saddle Up" in SPIRIT magazine on page 14. A final local relevant news article was found in the magazine AgriLeader. An A&M rodeo team member, Casi Sharp, was the actual writer of the article, "For Love of the Sport: Aggies Rodeo from the Heart" and had various team members give interviews about how rodeo affected their lives.

Hi. My name is Lainey. I have been involved in rodeo since I was 8 years old, and it has paid for most of my college education. I am going to be using this blog to find interesting articles concerning rodeo and basically just to express my opinions and ideas over many aspects of the great sport of rodeo. Even though I love rodeo, I do realize that many people don't know anything about it or do not like it at all. I will be posting information that hopefully everyone can relate too, even though I will be pushing my opinions forward as well.