Teen raises, trains bulls for PBR

A brown-and-white bull slams its hooves against the metal chute. Just shy of 2 years old, the bull has no idea what is going on. Mesa Pate, 19, tries to calm it the best she can as she slips a rope around its stomach to secure a blue metal box on the bull's back. The box, refered to as a dummy, is there to make the bull buck. The chute opens, and the bull's legs go flying, as does the box. It's on for about three seconds before Pate disengages it with a remote control. “It's a training tool, basically,” Pate said. “We take that dummy off of them when they do something right, when they buck hard or you want a bull to turn back and spin, so when they start to do that we trip the dummies off of them.” This training was a monumental moment for the five bulls brought to the Horse Palace outside Laurel on Thursday. It was the bulls' first time being bucked. It's definitely not going to be the last, either. Especially since Pate wants her bulls to be sucessful in her business. Pate started Mesa Bucking Bulls in 2009, but she's been training bulls for the past two and half years. “I always liked bull riding,” Pate said. “I've been in rodeo, rode horses a lot and I just wanted to do it and started buying some bulls and buying cows and it just kind of took off from there.” Two of Pate's bulls made it to the Professional Bull Riders finals in Las Vegas last month. One that went by the name of Highway 12 was a contender for bull of the year...more