MORE Cowboys!

I'm back in the saddle. (In more ways then one.)

I was introduced to real cowboys.

My brother-in-law (left) and Gary (right)....faints.

Gary on the left...(faints again) They ride twice a week to rope steer instead of say, watching a movie.

That's Arnold.  He is as kind as a man can be.  He makes most men I've dated look like pansies.

Only two things stand in the way of our love:

A.  He's happily married.
B.  He's 76.

He's not bad lookin' for 76...that's ALL I'm sayin' people.

I met Toots, I mean Arnold, after taking the kids mountain trout fishing. We swung by his ranch.

We met his horse that pranced like a dancer in the sun.  Its pen was pristine. The straw on the ground was fresh. 

Arnold purchased it from a trainer following a broken pelvis problem.  It WAS a racehorse (I knew it) facing a bullet to the head.  He rehabilitated it preventing both from being put out to pasture.

We fed it brown sugar roasted oats. Arnold poured delicious handfuls of what looked like granola into our palms. (I would have tasted it but I was trying to make a good impression.)

Wha the hell are those?  They're...um, steer. They put contraptions on their heads to prevent the creatures from getting rope burn when they get lasso'd. 

Isn't that sweet?  (Please God, never..EVER let Braja remember I'm alive.) Braja lives in India. (No cows were hurt.  I SWEAR!)

The Cowboys treated the kids with fatherly humour...tossing them on horses, pulling them off and letting me corall steer.

At 9:00 PM the men called it a day and loaded their horses onto trailers.We all drank a beer.  Not the kids...they drank Vodka.

Real cowboys...are cool.