Cowboy U.

Never mind the heat, dust and thirst. And it’s not so much the saddle sores or aching back from the horse’s jackhammer gait. Not the loneliness or isolation.

No, the cowboy’s greatest bane is the ferocious flora of the desert Southwest. The unassuming manzanita bush with its needle-like thorns that lie in wait for tender flanks. Or the cat claw, a tree that attacks a rider’s torso with apparent relish. Ocotillo, which wields its stems like whips. Brittle bush, desert hackberry. To say nothing of fishhook cactus, buckthorn cholla and prickly pear.

Still, real cowboys don’t let on that they mind this, the more bristly aspect of their working environment. Indeed, real cowboys must appear to mind little.

This ethos becomes clear on the early morning of the first day of class at Arizona Cowboy College, an honest-to-goodness vocational school for wannabe cowboys that takes the student beyond the “City Slickers” surface of one of the country’s most trying and scarce jobs.

It is Lloyd Bridwell’s self-appointed mission to preserve the heritage of the American cowboy and teach some of the fundamentals through his Arizona Cowboy College, in its 10th year.

Bridwell’s weeklong program begins with two days of “classroom” instruction at Lorill Equestrian Center in Scottsdale, then moves out of town to working cattle ranches. A recent class of five included two new ranchers looking to gain an overview of the job from Bridwell, who peppers his lectures with information about cattle, horses, land use and the modern-day economics of ranching.

“Some of this I knew, some I didn’t,” says Rich Risner, who just bought a ranch in southern Arizona. “It would take years to get this information through my own experience. This is a great shortcut for me.”

Hard Work, Low Pay, and Misconceptions

With the number of working cowboys decreasing, by some estimates as much as 25% per year, taken over by the rancher in a pickup, it’s not a growth industry. According to Jobs Rated Almanac, which analyzes and ranks occupations, the potential for job growth as a cowboy is minus-41%. In the category of physical demands, cowboying gets a rank of No. 248 out of 250 jobs. Pay can be as little as $5 an hour and is seasonal.

At the same time, the iconography of the cowboy is one of the nation’s most enduring, if misinformed, myths.

“I’m always amazed what people think a cowboy is,” Bridwell says. The 45-year-old spent many years as a wrangler working Arizona ranches before he and his wife opened the equestrian center. Bridwell has watched the dude ranch-boom with amusement, and its resurgence with the release in 1991 of “City Slickers,” a movie that portrayed the midlife vision quest of a group of urban friends who set out on a “cattle drive.”

“We’ve got a lot of people who come West, wanting to be in that movie,” he says. “These dude ranches put on a trail ride, and you may push cattle from one pen to another. You may rope a calf. What they call a roundup is a trail ride that happens to have cattle out in front.”

Such is not the case at the Arizona Cowboy College. After two days of introductory lessons in town, Bridwell’s students head for the hills, spending four days on a working ranch, sleeping on the ground, going where the rancher sends them and slicing through some of the West’s most inhospitable terrain. They bring in whatever livestock is left over from roundup, or “the gather,” as cowboys say. The students also assist, reluctantly, in branding and castrating calves.

The idea to start the college gestated while Bridwell was at home ill with Valley fever in 1989.

” I was watching a lot of TV, which I had never done,” he says. “I kept seeing all these commercials: ‘You too can be plumber,’ ‘You too can drive a big rig.’ I thought, ‘You too can be a cowboy.’ Why not?”

Bridwell had for years been a contract hand during roundups, assimilating and cataloging the cowboy way while continuing to operate his riding-lessons and trail-riding business. Everything changed when he got the call from two adventurous travel agents who asked him to design a challenging trail ride. He took them through the rugged Superstition Mountains and cautioned that it would not be a dude-ranch-esque, catered or even comfortable trip. They loved it.

Six months later, the pair were back and on another ride. With the two women in tow, Bridwell dropped in to see a rancher he knew. It was gathering time, and the New Yorkers asked if they could help. Skeptical, Bridwell let them ride out on roundup one day. Then another. They ended up staying for a week, plucking stray cattle out of the mesquite and pleasing the rancher, who saw dollar signs with each animal brought in.

From that evolved the college, the first of its kind in the state and one of the few cowboy schools in the country. Bridwell runs the school four to five times a year, during the spring and fall roundups. The classes are never more than eight students, and tuition is $750.

Bridwell’s lessons are methodical. With his students perched on a corral fence, he teaches the origins of the term “cowboy,” an 18th century word for teenage cattle drivers.

Bridwell notes that all American horses descended from the Arabian. Eastern horses evolved into the tall, loping animal that was well suited to working the flat, open ranches there. Western cowboys began riding ponies and bred the American quarter horse to be a smaller, quicker, more agile animal better suited for the rocky, high terrain in the West.

Cowboy college students learn from Day One that care for the horse is the most important concern of a cowboy. Students learn to saddle, brush and wash a horse, as well as the backbreaking work of shoeing an animal.

Bridwell emphatically lectures his students that without a horse, a cowboy is nothing. Feed your horse before you feed yourself. “You know what they call a cowboy without a horse?” he asks. “A pedestrian.”

‘In a Stable’ Horses ‘Get Bored’

“Horses like this kind of work,” Bridwell says, riding and wading through the dense underbrush on Ed Hanks’ Triangle M ranch, near the town of Mayer in north-central Arizona. “In a stable they get bored. Out here, their ears perk up. They go back with a different attitude. If it’s tough country, almost all of Arizona, they go home tired. We rest them a month or so.”

On land Hanks leases in the Prescott National Forest, Bridwell, Hanks and the five greenhorns are searching for wily cattle that have evaded roundup. On the rocky, hilly land, the students are more passengers than riders and rely on the horses to pick their way through underbrush and scramble down steep hillsides.

Early cowboys rode cattle into submission. Such an approach is unthinkable now. Chased cattle drop weight and lose money for the rancher. Today, cattle are “pushed,” or gently and patiently herded in the preferred direction.

The Mexican vaqueros were expert horsemen and first began using rope to herd cattle in the 19th century. Their braided cowhide lariats were 80 to 100 feet long. American cowboys first adapted, then shortened the rope. They used the most readily available material: marine rope. This seagoing rope was called “seago” by cowboys and was used in a 30-foot coil.

Going to the rope is a cowboy’s last resort, used only to obtain the most reluctant animal. When Bridwell introduces the subject to his students, he cautions that it’s the most dangerous aspect of the cowboy’s job. Today’s long-lasting nylon ropes can slice through a cowboy’s fingers.

“Be careful,” Bridwell bellows during a drill. “Next thing you know, it’s ‘thumb’s on the ground and the dog’s got it.’ ”

Ranchers appreciate Bridwell’s educational fervor. With ranchers increasingly under fire from environmental and conservation groups, such understanding is welcome.

“People say we’re on welfare because we lease federal land for grazing,” says Hanks, a taciturn but thoughtful man. “What Lloyd allows people to see is that we are caretakers for the land. We want, we need this land to be used wisely. Not all the environmentalists are right, and not all the ranchers are right. I think the answer is to compromise.”

Ranchers would be out of business if not for the itinerant cowboys who drift through, riding the property and doing the grinding work of mending fences, fixing gates, clearing springs and moving cattle from pasture to pasture.

Still, for some it’s an irresistible pull. Bridwell didn’t intend for his college to fulfill the fantasy of city folk--the “Yee-Haw” experience, he calls it. Yet the school draws as many stockbrokers and lawyers as it does fledgling cowboys.

Getting the Full Wild West Treatment

One memorable and enthusiastic student was a U.S. district judge. The middle-age man was Bridwell’s most ardent student, volunteering for the most dangerous and arduous work. Once the class got on a roundup and the judge had gotten a taste of roping and branding, he developed a need to follow through on other authentic cowboy experiences.

“One day he came back to camp with mud on his boots and blood on his shirt,” Bridwell said, laughing at the memory. “He stood up and said, ‘Let’s go into town, get drunk and get into a fight.’ I looked at him and said, ‘You’re a judge. We can’t do that.’ One thing led to another, and we ended up in town, at the bar.

“So, we’re sitting at the bar and order a beer. This guy, looks like a Hells Angel, is making a beeline toward me, shaking his finger at me. I’m thinking, ‘Well, the judge gets his wish tonight.’ The guy barrels into me and says, ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time.’ Of course, I’ve never seen him before in my life.

“The judge wants to fight him. I told him, ‘We can’t send you home with a black eye. Your wife is a district attorney.’ Well, we eventually got kicked out of the bar. That seemed to make him happy.”

The cowboy’s life is thorny, one way or another.