His spurs are well-earned on the ranch

WHEN I was a young man, well, I had me a cowgirl. Her name was Lindeen, and she tried to teach me to ride a horse named Duke. You have to let him know you’re the boss, she’d say. I tried, but the fact is, neither Duke nor I was convinced.

Lindeen looked as though she’d been born in the saddle. I, on the other hand, looked as natural on a horse as Donald Trump would on a skateboard. It just wasn’t meant to be.

That was a long time ago, but the memory still pains me. If you’re a fourth-generation Westerner, as I am, and come from a family of Oregon ranchers, there’s something inside you that yearns to mount a horse without looking like a fool.

Which is how I ended up at Arizona Cowboy College in Scottsdale one sweltering Sunday in October to begin a six-day course on a working ranch in the Sonoran Desert. The property backs up to the high country of the Tonto National Forest. The McDowell Mountains run jagged across the horizon to the south and all around you are the harsh but beautiful desert flats where the ground is as dry as powder and the landscape dominated by all things prickly, including stately 100-year-old saguaro cactuses and nasty chollas, which are sometimes called jumping chollas because they’re said to throw their spiny branches at unsuspecting passersby.

When I called Lori Bridwell, whose late husband, Lloyd, founded the cowboy school in 1989, she made sure I knew what I was getting myself into. “This isn’t a dude ranch,” she said. “There’s no luxury involved.” No cutesy hay wagons or line-dancing lessons; no morning rides to some pastoral location to eat blueberry pancakes and apple wood-smoked bacon.

I’d be sleeping in a dusty bunkhouse with half a dozen other greenhorns, an eclectic group that included a heavy-set sporting goods salesman from Calgary, Canada, and a young fashion reporter from Germany. All of us would be getting up at dawn to spend long days learning to handle, groom, saddle, mount and ride a horse. The only thing Lori would guarantee: We would be sore for days afterward.

Rocco Wachman, the head instructor at Cowboy College, was just as blunt: “I’m not the least bit interested in teaching anyone how to play cowboy for a week,” he said at 6 o’clock on our first morning. “I’m here to teach you to be a cowboy. Which is demanding, dirty, hard, physical labor. It’s also a dying art.”

On that first day, while we gathered around, Rocco, wearing a white Stetson and blue plaid shirt, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his Wranglers, walked into a ring with an appaloosa named Viejo Vaquero.

“This is an unpredictable, 1,200-pound animal that can accelerate 50 mph in a few strides,” he said, looking each one of us in the eye. “Anytime you think you know what this horse is thinking or what he’s going to do, you’re making a mistake. I ride this horse every day, and he still surprises me. Do not take a horse for granted.”

Part of my problem with horses is, I think they’re less fearful than I. Not true. “This animal is an absolute coward,” Rocco said, noting that this makes them dangerous. “Horses have no canine teeth, no claws. So when they feel they’re in danger, they turn 180 degrees and run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. That’s because they’re used to being in a herd and if there’s danger, the slowest one gets caught and eaten.”

That afternoon, we learned how to approach and halter a horse without startling it, by softly swinging our right arm over the horse’s neck and loosely buckling the strap with our left hand. We learned how to properly lead a horse and tie it up and use something that looks like a curved ice pick to clean its hoofs.

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Spartan bunkhouse

IN the evening, we took turns in the lone shower cleaning off our own sweat and dust. The simple wooden bunkhouse was nothing more than a single large room with cots spread around on the concrete pad and a couple of ratty couches. The bunkhouse faced the paddock and with that came the smell and sound of about two-dozen horses kicking stalls and just generally aggravating their neighbors.

Still, I chose the horses over six bunkmates. I’m a light sleeper, and even as tired as I was, I knew that sleeping in a room with six other people was going to be a real challenge. I grabbed my bedroll and made myself as comfortable as I could outside next to the barn. The ground was hard, the stars were bright and the nearby horses made a ruckus all night, but I still slept pretty soundly. Until I felt something run across my sleeping bag. A pack rat. It stole my iPod headphones, which I found the next day in its nest inside the barn -- along with a sock, several beer caps, pieces of machinery and an empty cigarette pack.

Late the next day, we were assigned our horses. This was a big deal. Like finding out who was taking whom to the prom. I was last.

“I think there’s only one horse for you,” Rocco said, sizing me up. “Viejo.” Well, this was news indeed because everyone at Cowboy College knew that Viejo Vaquero -- the Old Cowboy -- was Rocco’s horse. “Viejo is honest, and that’s the best compliment I could ever give a horse,” Rocco said.

Honest is fine, but Viejo was also big, probably the largest horse on the ranch, which meant it wasn’t easy getting in the saddle. There was a two-step stool by the corral, but using that was as good as admitting defeat. So I made sure my saddle was cinched properly and threw myself up like John Wayne. Viejo danced around a bit while I got situated, and Rocco watched us like a man watching his child ride a bike for the first time -- half amused, half nervous.

Viejo and I got used to each other during a few circles around the corral. There were some orange barrels a few yards apart at the end of the ring, and Rocco said that anyone who was of a mind could gallop down around the barrels and back.

A young cowgirl who reminded me a bit of Lindeen showed us how to do it. She 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. Not so soon anyway. But watching that young cowgirl 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 held the reins tight and used my legs to squeeze Viejo with all my might, bouncing around in the saddle, my rear slamming down in the saddle as Viejo came up and vice versa.

In other words, I did everything wrong. I was afraid that Viejo would run right past the barrels and into the fence, but he was too smart for that. It was only after we were around the barrels that I began to ease up on the reins, focusing on moving with the horse instead of against him. By the time I pulled Viejo up short in front of Rocco, you’d swear we both knew what we were doing. At least one of us did.

Now I’m not saying that I ever felt perfectly comfortable riding Viejo. Like any prom date, there were times I felt ignored, when he’d bust into a gallop when I told him to “Whoa!” or nervously dance sideways when I wanted him to giddyap. But I think we came to an agreement of sorts.

In the days ahead, Rocco showed us how to swirl a lasso overhead and, using a dummy animal on wheels, how to rope a steer. We tried it on live cattle and, I have to say, I wasn’t half bad.

In the evening, we’d grill hamburgers and steaks over a barbecue pit and Rocco would sometimes get a guitar out and sing country songs that weren’t entirely awful. Everyone was tired and sore at the end of the day, and most of us were in bed shortly after dinner. I continued to sleep outside, preferring the music of the coyotes in the nearby Tonto National Forest to the snores of my bunkmates.

On the final day, we rode into the desert to help George, a 75-year-old rancher and neighbor, round up a dozen or so meandering cows. We rode through prickly cholla and scratchy mesquite for hours under a hot sun, up and down dry washes, looking for strays snoozing beneath the shade of some scrub.

Viejo knew exactly what he was doing. I’d spot a cow and give him a nudge, and he’d canter off, picking his way through the desert, herding the dogie back into the fold. We found five or six lost cows and got them back safely to George’s ranch.

By the end of the afternoon, my muscles ached, my skin was chafed and my eyes were dry and red. But I’ll tell you what -- I felt like a real cowboy. Lindeen would have been proud.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The road to riding high

GETTING THERE:

From Los Angeles, it’s 410 miles to the Lorill Equestrian Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Cowboy College is held. From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, it’s about 40 miles.

From Southern California airports, there are nonstop flights to Phoenix on Southwest, America West or United. Restricted round-trip flights start at $117.

CONTACT:

Arizona Cowboy College, Lorill Equestrian Center, 30208 N. 152nd St., Scottsdale, AZ 85262. Six-day sessions run at least monthly through June 10 and Sept. 11 through Nov. 11. The cost is $2,250 and includes all meals and bunkhouse accommodations. Most sessions are limited to eight students. Arizona Cowboy College also offers one- and three-day mini-sessions on occasion. For information, (480) 471-3151 or www.cowboycollege.com.

-- David Lansing