Cochrane Rancher's Rodeo

Friday, Sept. 3 - Yesterday turned out to be one of the nicest days, weather-wise, we've had all summer, and today was equally as nice.  Pretty chilly in the morning, but by the afternoon, it was in the 70s and sunny.  We washed the dirty old RV this morning, trying to remove some of the road dirt.  This campground allowed us to wash it them at the site, so we took advantage of that opportunity.  Collins washed his too, and his car, but we didn't do our car since he had taken ours through a carwash the day before.  Marilyn's sister drove out from Calgary to visit  so after we had some lunch and rest, Joe and I drove into town to see if we could find the rodeo.

By the time we found it, the Friday rodeo was only a half-hour from starting.  The Friday rodeo was the ranch rodeo, and local ranchers (and their families) were the competitors.  Their events were more like the real-life events that take place on the ranch every day.  The first picture was the riders just warming up, but there were probably 9 or 10 different ranchers participating.

The first event was "branding," and they had to rope the calf in the pen, drag it outside the pen, brand it (with chalk), and release the calf.

The second event was cattle penning, where a team of 4 sorted out certain cattle by number and drove them down to a pen on the opposite end of the arena.  They did not use ropes to pick out the calf, they just used their horse.  They had 3 calves of the same number to sort out, and they had to keep the ones they had driven down to the other end from crossing back over a foul line, or they were disqualified.

The next event was sorting, which was similar to the penning, but they had to sort out the calves starting at a certain number, then sequentially the next ones up to 9 calves.  So a team (of 4 riders) might start with number 5, then have to get 6, 7, 8, etc.  The most we saw sorted was 5, and that was by a team of women.

Their next event was rustling, where the rider team of 4 had to sort out a certain numbered calf, load it into a horse trailer, then load 2 horses.  All of these events were timed, so they also had to "beat the clock."

The final event was called "doctoring," and they had to rope a certain numbered calf, both neck and back legs, get it downed, then dot its forehead with a dobber to indicate it had been "treated."  So usually all 4 riders were twirling ropes to get ready to get one roped.

It was all fun to watch.  The rodeo pros will compete the rest of the weekend, but it was interesting to watch these cowboys at work.  During the course of the rodeo, a little 2-year-old boy got lost, but he was found out on the street, outside the rodeo grounds.  At the end of the rodeo, the announcer also had something else that was found -- a set of top dentures.  We didn't wait around to see who claimed them, once Joe assured himself that his were in place.