Heelers by any other name
Cowgirl Sass And Savvy

By Julie Carter

Today we will look through the magnifying glass at team ropers, specifically the heeling end of the team.

There are three basic reasons that team-roping headers choose the heelers they do.

Top of the list is that they might actually have the skills to consistently catch the heels at which they throw their rope and, thereby, help win some money. This is the only reason ever actually stated in public, in front of people.

Not far down that list in second place is the fact that it helps if the heeler is fun and even better if he/she is a friend. It just makes being around them easy and entertaining, so why not enter up together?

This is actually the most common cause of most teams in most ropings today.

The third basis for selection, one that is not often discussed but holds true, is that a heeler might be selected for prestige.

If he has a famous, or even nearly famous name, a header might be inclined to dupe him into roping with him just to make the stories better later.

This last reason is illustrated by the sheer number of popular so-called "celebrity ropings" where, for an astronomical fee, a roper can be partnered with one of the "pro" boys from the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association standings. This motive can be categorized as the "image enhancement" mode of roping.

The low-budget ropers have to dole out their funds evenly over the number of times they are allowed to enter a particular roping. Often a selected "hit list" is phoned far in advance of a roping to book teams to the best ability of the pocketbook.

When the funds won't allow for the "celebrity" status roping, the next best choice is image enhancement. A flashy-looking blonde on a prestigious blue roan horse will draw appreciative stares wherever she goes.

When you can round one of those up that can also catch, is fun and a friend, nobody seems to care who does or doesn't go to the pay window. "I had a lot of fun," is a good enough payoff.

Clearly roping is not about actually catching the cattle since, after all, they are already captured in the a pen and then the chute.

And they have been known to cause a certain amount of trouble getting them in and then out of the chute. Even that part of it can be downright dangerous as demonstrated by our resident heeling team roper Dan.

Short on chute-help on this particular day, Dan was going to run the remote control that opens the chute and lets the steer out.

It's about the size of a stop watch and hangs handily around one's neck on an unbreakable parachute cord. Handy, if you are just standing on the ground, potentially lethal if you are in hot pursuit of the steer in front of you.

As they left the box, the header neatly laid his loop over the horns of the steer, setting him up and turning left.

Dan handily laid his heel loop in front of the steer's fast-peddling hind feet and picked them up just like he knew what he was doing.

Headed to the saddle horn to dally as the slack pulled tight, he realized the tail of his rope was tangled in the parachute cord of the remote - the one that was still around his neck.

The header, not yet seeing the wreck about to happen, kept his horse in a powerful forward motion, taking the steer with him.

Dan, long-legged and lithe, bailed off his horse and began running behind the steer, rope in hand, in an effort to keep it from pulling the cord tight and hanging him in the arena dirt.

Fortunately for all, the header saw "something" wasn't right as soon as he recognized Dan was afoot and somehow "connected" to the steer.

Everybody got pulled up, untangled and lived to tell about it.

The tales after the event were worse than the wreck itself. Dan, who is often labeled with undignified notoriety, won't live this one down for a long time.

Who says you need a tree to have a hangin'?

See Julie’s Web site a julie-carter.com. Blog is updated regularly – maybe soon. J