Cowboy Class : Caring for horses and preparing for competitions is hard work. But teens feel intensely dedicated to the animals and lifestyle they love.
Home on the range might seem like a novel idea in the land of homogenized tract housing, mega-malls and encroaching roadways.
Sure this is John Wayne territory, but for teens growing up here, “dude” belongs to the lexicon shaped by surfers--the ever-present symbol of youth and cool even among the landlocked who bus to the coast every summer.
For a number of high schoolers living in South County, however, traditions of the West involve horses, not surfboards. And dudes--who originally were the Eastern city slickers who vacationed at a real ranch--are right up there with the urban cowboy wanna-bes who dress up in crisp duds to do the two-step on the weekends.
“I never wanted to be a beach bum,” says Nick Lujan, a senior at San Clemente High, a school known for its hard-core surfers. Stocky from years of playing football, Nick sports a white straw cowboy hat with a tiny pin of the U.S. flag tacked to the side and worn jeans, mirroring the image of the rugged men he admired in all those Westerns he watched growing up.
“When those line dancers in their nice new Wranglers get all those girls,” he adds in a kind of easy, drawn-out tone, “it just bugs me because (the girls) think they’re with a cowboy.”
A cowboy? Nick, 17, like his horse-riding buddies, put their time, energy and dreams into keeping alive the tradition of the great American icon.
So what if Nick was born in Garden Grove and has always lived in O.C.? He’s learned roping and steer dogging (that’s sliding off a horse and wrestling a steer to the ground), and he relishes the “adrenaline rush from busting out on a horse fast” that doesn’t compare with anything else.
“To be a cowboy, it’s not just a name, a word,” Nick says. “It’s being able to work with animals, live off the land and make use of available natural resources. It’s about respect for horses, adults, for a lot of things and passing what you know to another generation.”
His dad grew up around horses, his grandfather has a ranch in Safford, Ariz., and someday he hopes to live on the Montana range.
Nick, who will seek a degree in agricultural business management in college, keeps a strawberry roan quarter horse named Estrella at the Ortega Equestrian Center in San Juan Capistrano. (“You never see a cowboy riding a llama,” he jokes.)
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The Ortega center, like others in the vicinity, boards horses and gives lessons. But it also serves as a second home to dozens of youths who spend hours after school and on the weekends engaging in every aspect of equestrian life, including the not-so-glamorous ones.
Dana Hills sophomore Amy Tomlinson squishes a mixture of bran, vitamin supplements and water with both hands. She comes to the center almost every day to voluntarily care for two horses belonging to boarders--brushing them, ensuring they’re clean and healthy and exercising them. She even cleans their stables, more for the ritual than anything else, since the center staff takes care of such chores.
For this 15-year-old, the work beats playing with the Barbie action figure horse she had as a little girl. Fortunately, San Juan Capistrano, where she lives, is “a horse town” making it easier for her to spend time with these majestic animals.
“Horses are just real sweet. I love their overall beauty and companionship,” says Amy, whose goal is to someday own a horse and be financially able to present it at shows around the country. She also wants to be a livestock veterinarian. She has a cockatiel and a cocker spaniel at home.
For years she has competed in Western Pleasure, a category that showcases the horse’s appearance and grace, as well as the trainer’s abilities. Amy’s bedroom, filled with with all the ribbons, buckles and silver dishes she and her horses have won, is a testament to her achievements. But the time invested has been more than a matter of landing another silver buckle to wear.
“I’m not just waking up every morning and going to school. I know I have the ability of taking care of another living being.”
Kim Shelton, a junior at Dana Hills High, echoes those sentiments: “It’s not just do well in school, go to the movies with your friends. This has taught me there’s something more.” She goes into a short discourse on learning about hard work, a term many adults don’t believe exists in a teen’s vocabulary.
In Kim’s case, there’s no disputing her meaning: She’s turned a “cow horse” (one bred to work cattle) into a show horse, and she spends two hours daily exercising him. Another hour or two is spent with younger kids at the Ortega center, teaching them to ride or tutoring them in their schoolwork at an outdoor picnic table.
Her mom had always wanted to ride horses but never had the chance, so when her daughter turned 8 and was old enough and big enough to take lessons, Kim was placed on her first horse. Eight years later, Kim’s parents escort her most weekends to competitions throughout the Southwest. Each win in the trail category has gotten her closer to the World Championship Horse Show.
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For others, like Seth “Shorty” Gorham, the ultimate is the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Assn. “It’s every cowboy’s dream, really,” says Shorty, 16, who has outgrown the moniker but still insists on using it. A San Juan Capistrano High sophomore who in June moved south from El Centro to live with his older brother, Travis, 20, Shorty comes from a genuine horse family.
“My parents have rodeo’d since before I was born. It’s my life. It’s all I ever do and want to do. My mom--she was riding when she was nine months pregnant with me.” He tells the story like some badge of honor and once again adjusts the baseball cap with the Veterinary Pharmaceuticals logo, his father’s employer.
Shorty and his brother work and live at Rancho Mission Viejo in San Juan Capistrano, raising cattle and caring for the horses there. On weekends, they’re off to Junior Rodeo Assn. competitions, where Shorty enters challenges of team roping and steer wrestling. Recently, he has started competing in technically daunting bronco riding.
“I don’t take a week off,” he says. “I can’t. You gotta be one with the horse, a team. So the practice never ends.”
“It’s not a lonely life being a cowboy,” he adds. He counts friends all over the rodeo circuit, whom he frequently sees on the weekend jaunts. Among local friends is Nick Lujan, whom he hangs out with at the Ortega center. Their friendship has inspired Nick to join the California High School Rodeo Assn. in January.
As for girls, Shorty and Nick prefer ones who can rope and ride. “There’s no other girls that are going to understand all the time you put into this,” Nick says.
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The personal freedom that accompanies rider and horse appeals to Jeremiah Garrison, 15, a San Clemente High student enrolled in home study.
Jeremiah and his family, who all reside in San Juan Capistrano, first got involved in a neighborhood equestrian center a decade ago when they lived in Huntington Beach. He and his older sister Heather, now 17, owned and prepped an English horse, Duchess, for the Western Pleasure category. Then two years ago, Jeremiah wanted more than show, so he started roping.
Duchess was sold and his sister lost interest, but Jeremiah continues to dedicate his time to the three horses his family boards: Chip, a quarter; his dad’s quarter, Quince, and his mom’s Pacifica, Chibasco.
Despite his parents’ urging to return to mainstream school, Jeremiah says he’s never felt totally comfortable around his peers’ close-minded attitudes.
“I prefer to be around horses and people into (horses). In sixth grade I used to get into a lot of fights because of what I was into. I’m sort of my own person. In school you can’t wear a hat, any hat.” Such restrictions bother him--even if he doesn’t want to wear a hat.
At the Ortega center, where he figures he spends most of the day, almost every day, Jeremiah does his homework outdoors, hangs out with the horses and other teen riders and finds solace among the mildly developed hills.
His parents, he says, “know that since I’m sort of like a cowboy, I’m doing something that’s good for myself.”
The Duke would be proud.