Rope Horse Training

In the early 90’s, while working for Cross S Cattle Co. I had lots of experiences that could only be experienced with A.C. Ekker involved.

He had a 400 head cow/calf operation in southeast Utah where we ran on high desert year round. It was big country, the cattle got kind of wild. We always had plenty of horses.

A.C. was also a competitive roper, so when we weren’t riding on the desert, we were training young horses. Because of the big country and wild cattle we wouldn’t take a young horse to the ranch until he was 4 or 5. Before that we would ride them at his place in town. Get them broke pretty good and rope on them.

One year we had an abundance of horses, so A.C. decided to put some of the in a rope horse sale that was coming up. So we spent a couple of months getting them ready.

One horse in particular, was a little grey gelding we called Casino. Like a lot of the horses we used on the ranch, he had been on the race track. A.C. liked this type of horse because of how much country we had to cover.

My job every morning was feed and then start riding some of the horses. Casino was a little bit bothered by the rope, so this particular morning I started with him. I was just riding him around slow playing with my rope.

A.C.’s arena was right in front of his house, where he could see it from the kitchen window. He had been watching me working with Casino who was still quite bothered by the rope. He walked out, climbed over the arena fence, walked over and said, “let me ride that horse”. He might have been drinking a little that morning.

I got off, he got on. He picked up my rope, and told me to take the bridle off. I looked up at him and he was dead serious. So I took the bridle off and he started swinging the rope. Casino wasn’t to pleased with this decision, he took off running around the arena. I was glad I shut the gate.

The gate was right next to the roping chute. After several Casino started looking for a way out and started running in and out of the roping boxes. After a few tries, he ducked in and out of the heading box, and A.C. came off.

He stood up still holding my rope in his hand. I went over to make sure he was alright. He just looked at me and said, “god damn that was scary”. He handed me my rope and went back in the house.

I caught the horse, put the bridle back on and rode him around slow for a while, apologizing to him. Casino went on to make a pretty good ranch horse. We ended up not selling him for quite a while.