Animal Lovers Staying on Rodeo’s Back

In the building known as the Pond, a grisly sight awaited thousands of spectators.

The victim went by the name of Classic Velvet, part of the “bucking bronco” show of the Flying U Rodeo. In returning to its pen, Classic Velvet crashed into a gate.

The horse galloped toward the chute at an estimated 35 mph, only to find the rear gate closed. It smashed its head on the back of the chute and crumpled to the ground like a running back floored by a devastating tackle.

Classic Velvet died at the scene.

The incident, which happened earlier this year, horrified those who watched it, among them David Havard of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Havard called it the worst incident he has witnessed in a rodeo arena, where, in his opinion, reforms are long overdue. But other animal-rights activists called it a fluke, an accident, saying that what happens on a regular basis in rodeo is far more egregious.

At a time when its chorus of critics has never been larger or more determined, rodeo is enjoying unparalleled popularity. It benefits from not one but two television contracts, while its bellwether organization, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn., or PRCA, is now a $20-million annual industry.

But the shadow over the sport is visible in Sacramento and dozens of other capitols where laws are enacted. Animal-rights groups have succeeded in banning it entirely in parts of the Eastern Seaboard and in restricting it so severely in Pittsburgh, Pa., that cowboys complain rodeos there are little more than ceremonial ritual.

After a yearlong investigation in 1993, the Humane Society of the United States launched an anti-rodeo campaign, targeting California, where the sport has been commonplace for more than a century, as a primary battleground.

The reasons are obvious. More than 3.5 million spectators attended California rodeos in 1995 alone, accounting for $18.5 million in ticket sales, according to the PRCA, which lists more than 700 active professional rodeo cowboys who live in California.

Local communities that hosted rodeos in the state last year took in an estimated $200 million. By comparison, the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force estimated the same income when it bid for the right to stage the National Football League’s championship game in 1998.

Longtime fans of rodeo say its appeal is even more understandable than that of professional football: Americans long for a simpler time, free of technology and corporate humdrum. And who better to symbolize that sense of freedom and elan than the cowboy, with his spirit of independence and grit?

“People in the United States are so inundated with problems,” said Terri Greer, spokeswoman for the PRCA. “Crowded freeways, higher taxes, violence, problems with schools. . . . Most Americans are actively seeking escape. And the cowboy is one of the last and best representations of a truly free spirit.”

But while the turnstiles are clicking in record numbers, criticism has never been more fierce. Despite a massive public-relations campaign and efforts by the PRCA to improve safety measures and streamline regulations in every rodeo arena, the Humane Society of the United States and the American Humane Assn. have issued a joint statement condemning rodeos “because they result in torment, harassment and stress being inflicted [on] the participating animals and expose [them] to the probability of pain, injury or death.”

The PRCA counters by saying that it was established in 1947, “a full seven years [before] the founding of the Humane Society of the United States. Cowboys and ranchers were this country’s first animal-welfare advocates.”

Rodeo is tied to the settling of the West, its contests and exhibitions derived from riding, roping and other skills developed when the range cattle industry flourished in northern Mexico and the western United States from 1867 to 1887.

Most rodeos employ five standard events: calf roping, bull riding, steer wrestling or bulldogging, saddle bronc riding and bareback bronc riding.

But the national humane societies argue that rodeo is “neither an accurate nor harmless portrayal” of ranching skills.

“Rodeo is nothing less than a symbol of what’s wrong with the country and with the planet,” said Eric Mills, the coordinator of the Oakland-based Action for Animals, which successfully lobbied Sacramento to outlaw the mangana, one of nine traditional events in the charreada, or Mexican rodeo, in which charros trip galloping horses by roping their front legs, frequently causing broken bones and snapped tendons.

Any rodeo, Mills said, “is an exercise in domination. It’s the strong over the weak, might makes right. . . . It’s also one of the most sexist events around.”

Toward that end, Mills and other activists are hoping to have calf roping eliminated in California, calling it the cruelest and most one-sided event going. Lobbying that had focused on the mangana now is trained on calf roping.

A 1995 video by the Humane Society of the United States shows riders lassoing calf after frightened calf, jerking their necks before dragging them in the dirt for 20 yards or more. Mills said crushed tracheae often result, “meaning rodeos are merely a detour to the slaughterhouse.”

A partial victory was scored recently in Orange County, a longtime bastion of rodeo. Animal rights groups convinced Cotton Rosser, president of the Marysville-based Flying U Rodeo, to eliminate calf roping, team roping and steer wrestling from its event at the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa in July, provided they cease the picketing and demonstrations that are fixtures at many rodeos.

The PRCA responded by refusing to sanction the event, saying it is “no longer professional.”

The PRCA accuses its detractors of being zealots who don’t represent the 33 million Americans it claims as fans and who fail to portray rodeo’s reality with accuracy or fairness. In a 1994 survey conducted by on-site, independent veterinarians at 28 sanctioned rodeos involving 33,991 animal “runs,” only 16 injuries resulted, said Greer, the PRCA’s spokeswoman.

“That’s less than five-hundredths of one percent,” she said.

Furthermore, in a California study between August and December 1994, on-site veterinarians at 26 PRCA rodeos reported that of 915 total runs of calf roping, only one injury occurred, and that calf “has fully recovered.”

However, during its 1993 investigation, the Humane Society of the United States reported that many rules aren’t enforced. In one instance, it contended that a society investigator saw a rider repeatedly kick a fallen horse--in full view of a PRCA animal inspector. Although such activity is subject to reprimand and disqualification, the society says the inspector did not intervene until its investigator asked him to.

Despite contending that 60 rules for the humane treatment of animals are strictly enforced, Mills said, the PRCA often has to be goaded into action. The agency boasts of having veterinarians present at each event, which Mills said came about reluctantly and only after vehement lobbying by activists.

After the bronc’s death in Anaheim in February, the SPCA succeeded in having Rosser’s Flying U Rodeo line the gates of its chutes with padding, which had never been done before. For the most part, though, activists praise Rosser for being uncommonly sensitive to the welfare of animals.

Compromise has been harder to come by in other places. Animal-rights groups recently petitioned the city of San Juan Capistrano, which prides itself on its cowboy heritage, to pass an ordinance banning from its annual rodeo sharpened spurs, flank or bucking straps, caustic ointments and electric prods, the items banned in Pittsburgh and much of what bothers rodeo opponents.

Dana Point resident Jane Garrison, who spearheaded the effort, also sought to have calf roping eliminated, but the City Council and Mayor Wyatt T. Hart, a rodeo aficionado, unanimously rejected her proposals. They agreed to follow PRCA guidelines, which permit dulled spurs, flank or bucking straps “lined with sheepskin” and “low-voltage” electric prods.

Because the rodeo in San Juan Capistrano already is sanctioned by the PRCA, Garrison called the council’s vote “a big nothing.”

The allegations of abuse have in no way diminished the popularity of rodeo. From April to October, rodeos occur up and down the Golden State, with Salinas staging the state’s biggest, offering prize money of $225,000.

But to many in the animal-rights field, Salinas symbolizes much of what they abhor. Mills noted that, in last year’s Salinas event alone, five animals died--three horses in a unsanctioned thoroughbred race and a calf and a steer in separate roping events.

Salinas is one of 800 events a year staged nationwide by the PRCA, 100 of which are in California. In addition, the state hosts to more than 250 amateur events a year out of an estimated 5,000 nationwide.

Regardless of the venue, calf-roping is the issue stirring the hottest debate and the focal point of most on-site demonstrations. Rosser of the Flying U admits that his own commitment to refrain from staging it in Costa Mesa is evidence that the protests are having an impact.

Ava Park, founder of the Irvine-based Orange County People for Animals, said, “I’ve seen them take an infant calf, 4 months old, still nursing from its mother, and send it flying out of a chute with a cattle prod. They throw a rope around a neck when it’s hurtling along at 27 mph and slam it to the ground.

“We’ve seen broken necks. Vets have given affidavits in which they report seeing two to three gallons of blood under the neck of a calf. Many times, the animal dies with a broken neck.”

For that reason, Park said, the television crews of ESPN and the Nashville Network, which share the rodeo rights, “never show a calf coming to the end of its rope. Why? Because it’s shocking--the neck stretches, the eyes bug out and the animal squeals in a way you just wouldn’t believe.”

The PRCA is fighting such charges with a campaign of its own. A video distributed nationally and narrated by actor Wilford Brimley quotes rodeo figures such as Rosser and even longtime veterinarians saying the animals are extremely well cared for because they must be: To abuse or inadvertently kill them would, after all, not be cost-effective.

Susan McCartney, a large-animal veterinarian in Reno, said the incidence of injury to calves during a PRCA rodeo is “no more than they would experience on a ranch.” McCartney said calf roping evolved from the range itself, where, if cattle needed medical attention or other care, “there’s only one way to catch them, and that’s with a rope.”

Such truths should be self-evident, Rosser said, conceding that while animal-rights groups will have an impact “for a while,” they will be silenced in the end.

“It’s like Will Rogers used to say,” he said with a drawl. “There ain’t nothin’ better for the inside of a grown-up or a child than the outside of a horse. We’ll let these people have their say, but you can bet we’ll prevail. Rodeo has always been here, and in my view, always will be. Us cowboys will make sure of it. We’ll have to. It’s what we do.”