OK, you Rough-Rider wannabes out there. Before you label me as a city-slickin’, unrealistic, liberal softie who’s never even stepped in cow crap, let alone dealt with any livestock — let me say this: I lived in the Midwest for a good portion of my impressionable youth — Ohio, to be specific — and in the blustery Buckeye state, we have a lot of three things: snow, livestock and unfortunately, rodeos.
In preparation for vet school, I was affiliated with 4-H and the thoroughly un-hip Future Farmers of America. I raised animals for the county fair, and I spent plenty of time with other kids who helped run the family farms. I’m not a novice when it comes to the cycle of life.
For the record, I don’t hate cowboys (or cowgirls). Admittedly, I may snicker inwardly when a guy, all decked out in Western attire, struts past with the exaggerated stiffness of an unoiled Tin Man and a belt buckle the size of Montana — but no, I have no hard feelings for them.
What I do have a problem with is the sad, cruel injustice of the rodeo.
In the violent tradition of the rodeo, normally docile animals are provoked into behaving aggressively through the use of painful “bucking straps,” electric prods, caustic ointments smeared in delicate areas, sharpened spurs and tail-twisting, which is exactly what it sounds like.
The animals are viewed as cheap, easy to replace and expendable.
If they are unlucky enough to survive, they are used until their bodies are too broken to entertain any longer, and they are finally sent off to slaughter.
The argument that these animals are destined for slaughter anyway does not justify the suffering and torment that they endure before they are sent to their deaths.
A veterinarian named Dr. C.G. Haber, who served as a federal meat inspector for 30 years, saw first-hand the discarded rodeo animals that finally arrived at the slaughterhouses.
He described the animals as being “so extensively bruised that the only areas in which the skin was attached (to the flesh) were the head, neck, legs and belly. I have seen animals with six to eight ribs broken from the spine and, at times, puncturing the lungs. I’ve seen as much as two to three gallons of free blood accumulated under the detached skin.”
Such injuries are often the result of calf-roping events and steer wrestling.
I know that you have seen clips of “bucking broncos” and bulls somewhere out there in TV land. What does the animal do when the rider has been thrown? It keeps bucking. Why? Because the source of the animal’s torment is not just the rider, who kicks heels modified with sharpened spurs in the animal’s sides — it’s the bucking straps that are cinched to an unbearable tightness around the animal’s genitals and abdomen.
The straps are tightly cinched around the animals’ abdomens, where there is no rib cage protection, and in close proximity to the large and small intestines and other vital organs. When it is tightened, it pinches the groin and genital area and the frenzied animal bucks out of pain.
In a Dec. 26, 2000, issue of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a rodeo cowboy admitted to the use of bucking straps and electric prods, “If you can’t use those devices, then you have no rodeo.”
Before the animals are released into the ring, they are trapped in the holding chute and harassed with electric shocks, tail-twisting, and anything else that would goad them into “performing.”
Even the organizer of the “World’s Toughest Rodeo,” Steve Gander, admits that bucking horses and bulls are “prodded with an electrical hotshot.”
Injuries to both the animals and the riders are expected. Torn ligaments and muscles, deep internal organ bruising, hemorrhaging, bone fractures, ripped tendons, and even death is not an unusual outcome for both animals and people in this violent “sport.”
Here are a few examples: * June 2, 1998: During a rodeo fund-raiser for the Connecticut Make-A-Wish Foundation, a steer was tackled and thrown to the ground, breaking his neck. A clown was called in to distract the stricken audience. The steer died, and the Make-A-Wish foundation announced it would no longer be affiliated with the rodeo.
* Aug. 9, 1999: A horse was killed when he slammed into a fence during a bucking event in Ottawa. The audience watched the horse go into death shudders before dying. Just two days prior to this death, a horse was killed in a similar fashion at the Santa Barbara Fiesta rodeo, marking the 10th known animal death at a California rodeo in four years.
* July 9, 1999: A Ford City, Pa., rodeo bull suffered an “anxiety attack” and jumped an 8-foot wall to escape. He fared better than a rodeo bull in Columbus, Ohio did just a day later, when he also escaped his pen, but was shot and killed by police.
* March 2, 1998: Two calves suffered broken legs during the calf-roping events and one steer died at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
* July 15, 2002: In Calgary Canada, seven animals died; a calf broke a leg during a roping event and was euthanized; a horse used in the chuckwagon event suffered a heart attack-induced aneurism and died; five more horses were later euthanized after being injured in chuckwagon events; and three horses suffered broken legs, one a broken shoulder and another a broken back.
This is only a sample of the atrocities I found listed in my sources, which also includes human deaths and injuries. I didn’t include them because I felt that the people involved had a choice in the matter, and chose to run the risks involved — the animals did not have that same choice.
There are some ordinances and state laws in effect. Ohio has outlawed the use of the bucking strap and Pittsburgh has specifically outlawed the use of electric prods, bucking straps, wire tie-downs and sharpened spurs. Unfortunately, there still are no real penalties for the injury and/or death of rodeo animals in most states — including Tennessee.
I realize that, with my intent to denounce the rodeo, I will be perceived as attacking a tradition. I do not believe that the rodeo is the sort of tradition that deserves preservation. What began as a contest between cowhands more than a hundred years ago has become a profitable, glitzy arena of greed. There is no justifying the violence inflicted upon all beings involved for the sake of blood money.
This weekend, the Challenge of the Super Bulls will be coming to Freedom Hall, here in Johnson City. The sponsors apparently have no problem exposing young children to the violence, going so far as to encourage them to participate in a calf scramble. They also had the bright idea to allow six volunteers from the audience face a “fighting bull” in the so-called “ring of fear.”
I’d like to know — who do you think should be more afraid?
To learn more, visit http://www.peta.org/mc/facts/fsent1.html

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