AN EIGHT-SECOND “DANCE” IS WHAT TIM BALDWIN, CHAIR OF THE CALIFORNIA RODEO SALINAS’ LIVESTOCK WELFARE COMMITTEE, calls the brief time that cowboy and animal athletes perform while in the ring. “The partnership between a rider and stock can often be best described as dancing,” he says. They’re partners, and treating the horses and bulls that partner with human athletes as such means protecting them and keeping them healthy, he says.
Rodeo opponents don’t see it as a dance. “The rodeo just needs to stop. There is no way to make it humane,” says Heather Wilson of Last Chance for Animals, which calls rodeos “glorified animal abuse.” Earlier this year the group campaigned to support a ban in the city of Los Angeles on specific rodeo devices like electric cattle prods and flank straps. The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Feb. 23 for a preliminary measure to ban the devices; an ordinance is expected to pass this fall.
To say animals are abused or suffer in rodeo are misconceptions that “arise from those who are simply unfamiliar with the sport,” says Baldwin, who has worked as a volunteer for California Rodeo Salinas for over 20 years. “We believe we have the right to interact with the animals,” he adds. “But with that right comes responsibility.”
Baldwin points to the over 70 rules that Salinas rodeo imposes on its participants that are in line with the rules of its sanctioning body, the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association, which describes itself as the largest and oldest rodeo sanctioning body in the world. Any violations of those rules may result in fines, disqualification or suspension. PRCA judges at the event levy fines and other penalties. In addition, the rodeo comes under California laws that regulate the events which, if violated, could be prosecuted by the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office. Wilson counters that oversight and the state laws that govern rodeos are lacking.
Investigators from the SPCA Monterey County are given unrestricted access to the grounds over the four days of events. SPCA President & CEO Scott Delucchi says in an email that investigators cannot be everywhere, so they focus on events they believe present the most risk of injury to the animals.
“While we do not agree with many of the current rodeo events and believe they pose a risk to the safety and well-being of animals, they are currently considered legal by the state of California,” Delucchi says.
Violations of rules and laws are infrequent, Baldwin says, because the cowboys take good care of their animals. “Livestock is the heart of rodeos, the athletes are their dancing partners… Without livestock we have no rodeo, so it defies everyone’s best interests for rodeo cowboys to mistreat the livestock.”
One example of a misconception that those unfamiliar with rodeo believe, Baldwin says, is that the riders are hurting the animals in order to force them to buck. He says they use animals naturally inclined to buck, and that tools, like the flank or bucking strap, are used “as a cue to enhance the bucking of an animal that already has an inclination to buck.”
Wilson contends the spurs used in horse bucking events mimic talons, fangs or claws, making the horse believe its being attacked by a predator. Bucking beyond their normal capacity could result in broken legs or backs, according to veterinarian and former bareback bronc rider Peggy W. Larson in an essay she wrote in 2015 entitled “Rodeos: Inherent Cruelty to Animals.”
Other tools that are used at the Salinas rodeo under regulation include electric prods with low outputs used for the safety of animals while moving them, Baldwin says. Spurs are kept dull. He contends they do not harm the animals.
(6) comments
THIS JUST IN, FROM SO. CAL.:
"They may be well cared for, but they are put in harm's way, and subjected to torment, injury and death. This is not "sport" but inhumane, uncivilized entertainment, which needs to end."
They may be well cared for, but they are put in harms way, and subjected to torment, injury and death. This is not "sport" but inhumane, uncivilized entertainment, which needs to end.
Here's a response from Dr. Peggy Larson--a veterinarian, lawyer, and former rodeo bronc rider:
Animals should not be injured or killed for entertainment and that is what rodeo is. It bears no resemblance to ranching. I grew up on a cattle ranch in North Dakota and spent 8 years as a ranch veterinarian there. My ranch clients did not ride bulls, speed rope calves or make their expensive horses buck. Rodeo is not American "tradition".
As a former bareback bronc rider, pathologist and large animal veterinarian, I have both the experience and autopsy proof that rodeo injures and kills animals. Dr. Robert Bay from Colorado autopsied roping calves and found hemorrhages, torn muscles, torn ligaments, damage to the trachea, damage to the throat and damage to the thyroid. These calves never get a chance to heal before they are used again. Meat inspectors processing rodeo animals found broken bones, ruptured internal organs, massive amounts of blood in the abdomen from ruptured blood vessels and damage to the ligamentum nuchae that holds the neck to the rest of the spinal column. As a former criminal lawyer, children that are exposed to and participate in animal abuse often grow up to abuse humans. I have seen children cry at rodeos when the calves are roped and slammed to the ground. It is time for this archaic rodeo "entertainment" to end.
“If ever there were a completely gratuitous abuse of animals, and often baby animals at that, all done for the sheer thrill and bravado of it, it is rodeo.” (--Matthew Scully, in his 2002 book DOMINION. Scully is a former speech writer for Pres. George W. Bush.)
"Do I think it hurts the calf? Sure I do. I'm not stupid." (--Keith Martin, chair of the board, PRCA. In the 2/6/2000 San Antono Express News, "Choosing Champions," by reporter Elizabeth Allen)
"Yeah, I accidentally killed and injured lots of calves when I was learning. I mean, I plain roped their heads off." (--a PRCA calf roper, "The mud, the blood & the poop," by PRCA reporter Gvin Ehringer, Colorado Springs Independent, August 19, 2004)
“The single worst thing you can do to an animal emotionally is to make it feel afraid. Fear is so bad for animals I think it’s worse than pain.” (--Dr. Temple Grandin, world-renowned animal behaviorist)
“Do animals feel fear? Nah, they don’t feel fear. They’re an ANIMAL!" (--Russ Fields, Castro Valley, CA rancher and president of the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Committee, 5/19/18 KGO-TV segment)
“Women should not rodeo any more than men can have babies. Women were put on earth to reproduce,and are close to animals. Women’s liberation is on an equal to gay liberation—they are both ridiculous.” (--a Wyoming steer wrestler in the book, “RODEO: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and the Tame,” by Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, Univ. Tenn. Press, 1982)
“The eighteen-year-old rodeo queen and her princess told me that rodeo people, including themselves, ‘hated Democrats, environmentalists, and gays.’” (--from “Rodeo Queens and the American Dream,” by Joan Burbick, Public Affairs, NYC, 2002)
“Rodeo is not a true ‘sport.’ That term denotes willing, evenly-matched participants. Rodeo does not qualify. Rather, it’s a bogus, macho exercise in DOMINATION. For most of the animals involved, the rodeo arena is merely a detour en route to the slaughterhouse.” (--Eric Mills, coordinator, ACTION FOR ANIMALS)
“If it gets to the point where people think rodeo is inhumane or cruel, they quit coming, and then we’re out of business.” (--Tom Hirsig, CEO, Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo, in the July 27, 2018 Wyoming Tribune Eagle) MAKE IT SO!
If in doubt about rodeo's inherent cruelty, see these two short videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmYFKlUnlXE (Humane Society of U.S., 1995), and
the prize-winning 2019 "BUCKING TRADITION" - https://www.actionforanimals-oakland.com/
Rodeo is condemned by EVERY animal welfare organization in North America
due to its inherent cruelty. For most of these abused creatures the rodeo
arena is merely a detour en route to the slaughterhouse. To refer to them as willing "athletes" is beyond obscene. They are not "trained" to perform their bizarre behaviors in the arena--they are TORMENTED into it, with flank straps, spurs, kicks slaps, noise and painful "hotshots."
I was present at the 1995 California Rodeo when FIVE animals suffered and died. A roping calf with a broken back was not humanely euthanized, but simply trucked off to slaughter. (I was later told it took two days.) I asked the attending veterinarian if he administered any pain-killers. "No," he responded, "that would ruin the meat." UNBELIEVABLE! His license should have been revoked for malpractice, IMO. Only in the aftermath of this mayhem did the PRCA begin requiring on-site veterinary care at all its sanctioned events. The IPRA has no such rule, nor do the overwhelming majority of the estimated 5,000 U.S. rodeos and charreada, to their ever-lasting shame. LEGISLATION IS IN ORDER. Minimum rule should be, "NO ON-SITE VETERINARIAN, NO RODEO RO CHARREADA." Race tracks, endurance rides, horse shows all require on-site vets. Why not all rodeos, pray?
Rodeo has almost NOTHING to do with agriculture or life on a working
ranch, it's mostly macho hype, an exercise in DOMINATION. REAL cowboys/girls never routinely rode bulls, or wrestled steers, or rode bareback, or barrel raced, or practiced calf roping (babies!) as a timed event. Some "sport"!
Rodeo has had its brutal day and now--like those Confederate statues--belongs in the Dustbin of History. LEGISLATION IS IN ORDER. The United
Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales) outlawed rodeos back in 1934; Germany
and the Netherlands have since followed suit. Can the U.S. be far behind?
x
Eric Mills, coordinator
ACTION FOR ANIMALS
Oakland
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