Cowgirl Up! (23 page)

Through Angel Horses Jonnie is giving the gift of a second chance to both the animals and members of the community. She hasn't been able to accomplish that “cowboy town” dream yet, but she and her volunteers serve as many as one hundred clients a month and turn away that many because of lack of land and an indoor facility. Jonnie has enlisted help from the White Aspen Ranch, a beautiful indoor facility a mile from her place. That helps with the overflow clients and during the winter “so we don't have to turn anyone away.” Jonnie, who takes no salary, holds an annual fund-raiser to help defray the costs of the facility.

“We focus on kids that have lost their parents, struggle to fit in at school, or are just lonely and lack confidence. The horses seem to be such healers,” she said. About 75 percent of her clients are seniors—“shut-ins, in hospice, last wish, last ride, lonely, what-have-you. All find comfort here with our volunteers and critters, and it hurts deeply to turn down anyone that just is in need of a hug and human and critter touch.”

Jonnie says her health is good now, just “gimpy from all the years of abuse. I no longer run but take long walks and spend hours in the gym. I am also an in-home fitness trainer and just love it. I have been a personal trainer for over twenty-five years, and it is great now to go into people's homes and motivate them there.”

All the years Jonnie was so focused on her career and goals, marriage and family were never in the picture—except once. In the mid-1980s she found love with “Big T”—Terry Robinson from the Montana Band (formerly the Mission Mountain Wood Band). But a week before they were to be married, Jonnie watched the news on TV: A terrible plane crash had killed all five members of the band, the pilot, and four other passengers. She was devastated.

For the next twenty-five years, love eluded her.

“I did finally find the man of my dreams,” Jonnie said in a recent interview. “Six-foot-two, fit, wavy white hair with steel blue eyes, an outdoorsman, secure, and who had a dog bed in every room of his home. A terrific cook and he loved to spoil me. He was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and after a two-year battle I lost him. He did ride my horse once, but we never got that chance to ride off into the sunset . . . but my heart did.”

Jonnie was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1991.

“What I learned about success in my quest for gold is that success comes to those who are willing to risk more than other people feel is safe,” she said. “Whatever happens now is a bonus. Just being here, I'm a winner.”

Although not a Montanan, another modern cowgirl deserves a word of recognition for her success in rough-stock riding. Jan Youren of Boise, Idaho, started competing at age eleven at an all-girls rodeo her father produced. That first bareback bronc, “in my father's version, threw me so high in the air the birds built a nest in my pocket before I hit the ground. Dad hoped that would take it out of me, but it didn't.”

Youren continued to compete for more than fifty years, until the age of sixty-three, when she retired with five world championships in bareback bronc riding, thirteen reserve championships in bareback, and fifteen reserve championships in bull riding. “I said when my granddaughters beat me, I'll quit,” she said. One of her granddaughters had won second at the WPRA World Finals Rodeo that year. Youren came in third.

She was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1993.

“Winning doesn't always mean being first. Winning means you're doing better than you've ever done before.”

—B
ONNIE
B
LAIR

O
ctober 1941 was the last time women were allowed to compete on the “men's circuit,” when Vivian White of Oklahoma won the world champion title for women's saddle bronc riding at Madison Square Garden, New York.

No woman had qualified to ride against men in PRCA (formerly RAA) rodeos since then—until Kaila Mussell came on the scene in bronc riding in 2001 and Maggie Parker in bull riding in 2012.

These women's successes put them in an elite class of women who have broken the gender barrier in professional sports traditionally dominated by men. They have been called “the Danica Patrick of rodeo.” Patrick made her mark in the world of professional auto racing, becoming the first woman to win an IndyCar Series race, and by winning the pole position (a leadership position) at the Daytona 500 in 2013.

Danica Patrick summed it up well for all women seeking to follow their own dreams: “You can only lead by example, and I don't necessarily want my example to step outside the box and be a girl in a guy's world,” she told an Associated Press reporter as she prepared to take her position in the top starting spot in a race at NASCAR's elite Sprint Cup Series at Daytona in February 2013. “But if you have a talent for something, do not be afraid to follow through with it and do not feel different. Do not feel like you are less qualified or less competent to be able to do the job because you are different. Ignore that and let it be about what your potential is.”

Kaila Mussell of Chilliwack, British Columbia, entered her first saddle-bronc event in 2001 in Prineville, Oregon. She placed fourth, becoming the first female competitor ever to finish in the money in a PRCA rough-stock event. The next year she came within $150 of filling her professional card by earning a minimum of $1,000 on the pro circuit, and then in 2003 she succeeded. Again, the first woman to do so.

Kaila is still the only PRCA woman saddle bronc rider in North America.

It's not surprising that Kaila ended up in rodeo. It was in the family genes. She grew up on a farm, riding horses and working cattle. Her mom was a rodeo queen, her dad, Jack, was a bronc and bull rider, and her older brother, CEJ, rode saddle broncs and steer wrestled. Kaila was eleven when she started riding steers and barrel racing. Her younger sister, Filene, also became a barrel racer and steer rider.

Kaila also took up trick riding and performed throughout western Canada and at the Calgary Stampede from 1996 to 1999.

An admitted adrenaline junkie, she grew tired of barrel racing and was looking for a new, more exciting challenge. Kaila said she was too old to ride steers (the smaller animals now used for kids' competition), and she wanted to stay in rough-stock riding. At first she thought she'd graduate to riding bulls, but her parents were adamantly against that. “Too dangerous,” they said.

“Okay,” Kaila said, “so what else can I do?” She broached the idea of riding broncs, and her parents were on board with that. “They've been good about it, very supportive.”

Kaila was inspired by the cowgirls from the early 1900s and was drawn to rough-stock riding. “I didn't know of any women that currently rode, especially in the modern style of saddle-bronc riding.” She decided to go ahead and compete with men, because the WPRA didn't offer saddle bronc competitions. (The organization discontinued its women's bareback and bull riding after 2008.)

It hasn't been easy being the first woman in a male-dominated sport, but Kaila refused to back down when people told her women don't belong in rough-stock events. “I did the research, read the [PRCA] rule book, and found there was no rule prohibiting women, so I went ahead and did it.”

“She had quite a lot of ups and downs with people accepting a lady in bronc riding,” her father, Jack, told the
Chilliwack Times
. “It took quite a while to win the judges and people over.”

Kaila considers her dad her mentor. “We were always raised that if you can do the job, if you're capable, you can do it.”

For a while, the negative reactions bothered the perfectionist cow-girl, but now “I am true to myself, and I don't care what others think anymore. I'm just a bronc rider, I don't ask for favors. If I'm capable, then I should be there.”

She told an interviewer on U Spur Radio: “I think a lot of the men were sort of scared of me. But I can't help them with their thoughts. If they have a problem because I beat them, I have better things to worry about in life. I'm competing more against the animals than the other riders.”

Kaila says she teases and jokes with the cowboys. “I'm not a male-basher—the guys have been really good to me. It's all about having fun, enjoying the ride. For years, I kept hearing ‘just have fun,' and finally, I am.”

A writer from the
Calgary Sun
asked a saddle bronc rider at the Roughstock Rumble about his female competition. He replied, “Oh yeah, no big deal.”

And that's the way Kaila likes it.

“I would say I've been accepted really well,” she said. “I don't like to point attention to the fact that I'm the only female in this event. Obviously, I can't help that I am. It's really cool, but I want to be respectful of moving into what's considered male territory.”

“Once you know her, you know the battle isn't with anyone but herself,” her father said.

Kaila did consider quitting along the way, after several shoulder injuries and broken bones, tired of fighting stirrups and saddles that didn't fit her five-foot, two-inch frame and the immense pressure she put on herself to bring home money every time.