Copyright 1989 truth-or-consequences
Sold to: The Western Horse
NON-FICTION
3264 Words Exactly

Before you read "Dudes"...

 

 
The Following Article, "Dudes", was written for the dude
ranch employee (dude wrangler), and not for the general
public. Only someone who works or has worked extensively on dude
ranches can or will appreciate "Dudes". If you are easily offended,
or feel you might be, please, just hit your "BACK" button and
leave this piece unread. If, however, you fit the above category
in that you have worked extensively in this field, feel free to
read on. In most instances, the professional "dude herder" will be
able to say to him/herself, "Yeah! I've been there!"
If you are offended by this piece, please don't leave me rotten
Email complaining about it. I'll only reply with:
You were warned...
It's not that we "disliked" our customers...not at all. But you
get tired of even Filet Mignon, if you're forced to eat it every
single day. I've been reassured countless times by
cowhand friends who've also been lured into the field, that "Dudes"
was like a tall, cool drink of water to a thirsty desert rider.
It hits the nail on the head even if it is a little raw
and many who've written about the industry haven't
been nearly as kind as I...

 

 

When I was a kid you could rent an old trail hoss for about a buck and a half an hour. And that's about what you got from the beast-- a buck and a half an hour. I saved my allowance and lawn mowing money all week so I could ride on Saturday afternoons. And it was a dream come true when finally I was asked to work for the ranch I'd been renting from all those years. I was ecstatic to actually be paid for doing the same thing I'd been paying them for.

I learned to shoe and doctor and gentle and train. I rode the rough stock and the mustangs and worked with the abused or spoiled killers the city folks sold us. I green broke five Appys a day, for two dollars a head. They were the original blood lines, for those who remember-- the big boned, Roman nosed, hard headed, white eyed, 1400 pound lunatics that would run through a fence or the side of a barn if they took a notion to. I managed the hay rides and guided the tours, the pack trips and the hunting expeditions. I rode every state in the West, on rustler patrol, fence inspection or round-ups. And I wrangled the dudes.

Over the years I tried my luck on a number of different ranches, and I saw how various owners handled different situations. Each ranch has its own class of clientele. Every geographical area caters to a different kind of vacationer. Each region has its own breed of dude. Still, after guiding a few hundred thousand tourists on trail rides across the west, the horse renting public can be divided into recognizable categories, from the best to the worst.

70% of the folks who come to rent horses by the hour are families on vacation. They are the bread and butter for most dude ranches.

70% of those families are decent, well rounded yuppies who just want to have a good time, and to show their kids a "Western Adventure". Few of them ride well; many barely ride. A good percentage have never seen a horse up close. But that's not an issue on a ranch that keeps some polite stock in the pens.

The husbands are usually an office manager or some such-- and a good wrangler will go out of his way to help the man save some face, and not look overly inept in front of the wives and kids

The wives are often scared-- but try hard not to show it. Again, a competent wrangler will dispel their anxieties, and help them have a good time. After all, that's what they're there for.

The kids are generally fearless. The daughters want a "pretty" pony. They don't care if he's a thousand years old.

Young boys want a mount that's as gentle as a kitten-- but which looks like a fire-eating bronc. I usually tell the boys they're riding "Killer", a big, beefy quarter horse, if possible, a little on the lazy side, because the boys will test 'em.

The little girls ride "Peanut", hopefully a little paint; gentle, responsive and calm. The girls are often more self conscious about their ability to control the horse than the boys.

The wives ride "Woody Allen", preferably a smallish horse, benign and harmless.

The husbands ride "Old Bleu", a distinguished looking hunk of a steed, but past his prime, and no longer capable of much chaos.

The horses and the names change from ranch to ranch, but the personalities don't. Rides with this staple customer are usually uneventful. By the end of the two hour trail the wives have a sore jaw-- from clenching it. The husbands' butts are sore, though they will go to heroic lengths to disguise it. The only clue will be the flushed cheeks, and the tense and strained muscles in the face. The boys are disappointed because they weren't allowed to gallop pell-mell down the face of some rocky precipice. And without fail, the little girls all want to take "Peanut" home to their suburban back yard. The family often tips, they are polite, they do what they're told, and they promise to return next summer. If I could guide families like that all day, I'd still be guiding dudes.

But there are "other" types of customers. The remaining 30% of dudes seem like 90%. We tend to forget the nice folks-- but we remember the turds. 30% of families show up like Chevy Chase on Summer Vacation. The kids whine and grumble because they don't like horses in the first place, and want to know why they didn't go straight to Magic Mountain. We usually have to ask them to leave their ghetto busters in the car-- as the stock is about to go over the fence. The wives, with makeup just a tad....too obvious and a smile too quick-- have PMS, but are determined to show their husbands that THEY know horses, having taken those three lessons from the horse show crowd down at the neighborhood stable when they were 14. The husbands are loud, obnoxious, and bordering on rude. They probably had a few beers before they showed up. Liquid courage, you know. They've never ridden before, but if asked, they've broke every bronc in the west, and made a million on the rodeo circuit enough years back that there's no possibility of their deeds being verified. They swagger to the wrong side of the horse and jerk the reins a few times, just for good measure, to make sure that evil-eyed equine knows who's boss. That's what a rough and tumble, real cowboy does, isn't it? We talk this crew into an abbreviated version of the one hour trail-- and we all call in our markers, trying to get out of taking the ride. But one guide must always lose, and the ride commences.

We don't get a hundred yards down the trail before the husband's horse, an ancient gray with three hooves in the grave, is spinning and jumping around. The man slaps it along side the head, for being a "bad" horse. We tell him to relax and stop jerking on the horse's mouth-- he becomes indignant. And so it goes. The daughter complains that her horse "won't do anything", even though it walks politely down the trail without so much as a swish of the tail. It's a ploy she learned from her mother, who complains that HER horse is too bouncy and she wants to go back. Everyone has been told eight times to stay in line and walk their horse through this part of the trail, but everyone is yelling and trying to pass through the mesquite or on the cliff-side of a narrow mountain trail. The hooligan young boy screams "Yee Haw" as he whips his pony with the reins and kicks as though his legs will fly off. The horse continues on, undaunted-- and the boy exclaims that he sure wouldn't come back to a ranch that has rotten horses like ours. Silently, we thank him.

It isn't only the Adam's Family who are the bane of dude ranches. Young couples, freshly married or still courting, make up a large percentage of customers. Many are just nice folks wanting to spend a pleasant afternoon afork a horse, and we do all we can to make that wish come true. But like I said, we forget the good ones.

The most common unpleasant scenario with couples is the "Macho Boyfriend Syndrome" (MBS). This is most often a young stud who wants to ride a young stud. When asked what kind of rider he is, he usually replies, "I can ride anything you've got." At some liberal ranches, we put him on just such a critter. He's never mounted long. He threatens to sue as he screeches away in his Hot Rod Camaro. We invite him to come back again "real soon". At the more image-conscious operations, this guy is allowed to ride a decent horse, and it is the terrible bad fortune of some unlucky wrangler to be chosen as guide. It will be a test of wills all the way around the trail, just to keep this dude alive. He'll bolt off at every temptation, will often harass his lady's horse into some kind of misbehavior, and will drive the guide nearly to homicide. It's not uncommon to be forced to physically dismount such an ass, and lead his horse back to the stable, while he walks behind. And THAT certainly impresses his date.

We see a large number of women come to ride by themselves. Usually they represent themselves as "expert" riders. We are understandably dubious. Most ranches will ask the renter to describe his/her riding experience and ability. We've come to learn that if they say "beginner", which few will admit to, that means they have never seen a horse, not even on TV. If they say they are "intermediate", that means they saw a horse once in a field, and probably fed it a handful of grass through the fence. If they claim to be "expert", we can be assured that they once sat on their sister's horse in the yard when they were eight. That interpretation mostly keeps the ranch out of court-- and it's usually not far from the truth. I've guided "expert" riders who didn't know how to stop a horse, or even rein left or right. They usually say, "I wasn't taught this way," or "This horse sure was trained incorrectly". Every once in awhile they're right. But what they usually mean is that they thought the horse would be on "auto pilot", like the ones on the carousel at the Fair.

I've ridden behind a large number of "expert riders" whose saddle began to list rather alarmingly, port or starboard-- and they thought it was all part of the ride. I often would let them slip to a considerable angle, say 30 degrees, before suggesting they "stomp on that high stirrup", or before stopping to tighten their cinch. They'll reply, "Yea, I thought something felt funny." Then they giggle, as if they are so incomprehensibly cute. Well maybe they are....

The ranches often see young men, from 21 to 31, who want to make special arrangements to take a horse out for a few days without a guide. Their dream is to ride off into the proverbial sunset with a canteen and a bag of jerky, to find John Wayne, or to be John Wayne. We seldom let them go-- but of the few I've seen who could convince us they had the "True Grit" necessary to pull it off, and who ride off for a three day retreat in the "wilderness", almost all are back the next morning, bruised and beaten, some having lost their horse, most having drank all their water, and eaten all their food, and nearly froze to death that night because they couldn't get a fire lit off. Besides, there were "wild creatures out there!", they'll exclaim breathlessly. Well, a pack of mangy coyotes can be pret-ty intimidating, I suppose. Good grief.

The western US is seeing a huge increase of European tourists. Mostly, we prefer them. They are nearly always polite and genuinely interested, having a fascination for the "Old West" that's frankly refreshing. We don't seem to appreciate our own heritage, and that's sad. The Europeans do what they're told along the trail, and seldom cause any trouble. We do, however, grow just a tad weary of their questions, which positively run the gamut. All are well intentioned, but even the most accommodating among us become sensitized to their incessant inquiries. I recall being asked four times in one week if I took my horsey's shoes off at night before I put him to bed. On the first three occasions I explained in some detail the principles and techniques of shoeing a horse, the life expectancy of the shoes, the serviceability of the hoof, methods of trimming, indications of wear, advantages of mustang feet as opposed to those of domestic horses, etc. etc.. I answered their question to the best of my ability, and they seemed pleased to learn the information. But on the fourth occasion that week I told the group from France, simply, "Yes. I did take my horse's shoes off every night." It only took a second to say it-- and the group thanked me and went away exactly as satisfied as all the others.

Honestly, it was a rotten thing to do. But guides, especially late in a busy season, experience serious "Dude Burn Out Syndrome" (DBOS). And frequently we want nothing more than to be left alone with them for half an hour with a sharp ax or a blunt, heavy instrument.

The horses, too, experience a variation of DBOS; It's called "EDBOS" (Equine Dude Burn Out Syndrome). It's a similar strain. They try hard to interpret all the different and usually inappropriate inputs and instructions from all the various riders, but after awhile, they just give up, deciding, instead, to answer to an "average" of all those cues, and, when in doubt, to simply do what they want or what the other horses are doing. It's impossible to blame the horse, but dudes usually try, complaining of poorly trained mounts that are stubborn and unresponsive. What if you had a dozen different bosses every day, all telling you to do different things, and all in different languages! Some horses take the overwhelming barrage of conflicting commands better than others, but none hold up to it well or indefinitely. By the end of the season the saddle horses are as irritable as the guides.

Hunting trips are unequivocally the worst, and this writer and everyone he knows flatly refuses to guide them anymore---even guides who hunt themselves, like me! It could be that there has been a gradual degradation over the years of the caliber of men who pay a hunting guide, but truthfully, they've always been a sordid lot. The boozing begins before the first pack animals move out­­ and by the time we reach camp it's often hard to keep the greasy bankers on their jaw-sore hoss. They pile off and fall in an oblivious heap, wanting only to know when the camp's set up and the gourmet meal is served. Most show up with elaborately scoped custom rifles---for hunts of forty yards in thick brush and bramble.

Some trips are paid for dearly, and the customers have a right to expect and demand nothing but the best. The trouble is that even the "bargain basement" customers demand exactly the same service as is found on the thousand dollar a day trips. And when they don't get it, they whine. As rides go out from base camp over the first few days the party becomes more squalid. The men get drunker and the unfortunate women they've brought along get more bitchy. If hunting is poor, a kind of "Kill Anything at All Costs" (KAAAC) mentality sets in, and the hunters become downright dangerous to all living things in their proximity. Everything begins to look to them like a bear or a buck or a cat. That 1200 pound Morgan you're riding suddenly has yellow fur and paws and a bull's eye painted squarely across its rib cage. I have often looked through the brush or across a ridge on about the fifth gameless day to find one of these "Great White Hunters" (GWHs) taking a bead on the middle parts of my trusty mustang with his designer, color-coordinated-high-powered-yuppy rifle. A yell or a round in the air will usually draw off their fire, and they'll be amazed that your horse looked so much like an Elk (and you, they usually exclaim, looked just like a set of antlers). How uncanny! They may be ashamed for having nearly blown your brains out, but they're all the more punchy the following day.

The wives and girlfriends are often abused, and it becomes a delicate matter for the guide to decide when to step in, or when to let sociology take its natural course. Hunting trips often end with hard feelings. Sometimes they end with fatalities, accidental, or not.

We get the extremely obese on the hourly, Sunday afternoon rides. I swear the saddle horses try to blend in with the herd when they see these "live ones" drive up. Sometimes the poor beasts simply cannot handle the weight, and the guides, if they're worth their salt, show Kissinger what diplomacy and tact are really all about by soothing the ruffled feathers of the four hundred pounders. Some ranches keep some draft stock saddled for these customers, and they work well.

In some areas of the country we get groups of drug gangs. I have been amazed that in all the years I've guided dudes, I've never had a problem with these types! I evolved to carry a sawed off ten gauge named "Brutus" in a scabbard on the off side, and a five pound Colt Walker in a well oiled saddle holster on my left hander's side, thong off the hammer. Perhaps that has something to do with my fine luck with these respectable gentlemen. But sometimes female guides have trouble out on the trail with misguided little boys of this ilk.

The most outrageous group I've ever seen show up for their afternoon reservation was a set of eight ladies "of the evening" near Reno, Nevada, all clad in clear cellophane tops. Nice gals all. Still, I'm a hard guy to embarrass, and, well, I wasn't really disconcerted, but, well, I guess the cat just had my tongue for the duration of that THREE HOUR tribulation. But I survived it. And got a tip. Ahem.

Few ranches in the country will allow rides without a guide anymore. It's too bad, and it's yet another neon sign of the vanishing west, of an ever eroding freedom, and of an irreversible evaporation of the romance that made the west a place adventuresome folks wanted to be. But in this age of sue-happy suburbanites, no ranch can really shoulder the risk of letting folks who have no experience and less common sense take off on a beast that is, after all, a living entity with thoughts and desires and shortcomings of its own, and not a recreational vehicle that will shut itself down and stop when the rider falls off. It's getting to be a risky business to run a dude ranch anymore. I know a ranch that ties the horses together in a line, head to tail, for every ride. The customer is provided a set of complimentary reins-- which are tied off impotently to the halter. It represents the epitome of wimpdom, and I can't honestly imagine paying good money for such an "adventure", but this ranch has decided that it is the only way to stay financially afloat, and based on the mentality of dude we're seeing over the last ten years, I understand. That ranch is usually booked all day long, however, which tells us something.

All in all, guiding dudes can be an enjoyable summer job. You'll meet many interesting people; you'll endure quite a few "genetic blanks", and some real problem cases. You'll guide many folks whom you cannot imagine why they voluntarily chose to take a ride, since they seem to be genuinely terrified of horses. You'll work with a few people who are apparently there for no other reason than to make your day miserable. You may well meet a boyfriend, girlfriend, or future husband or wife. You'll meet folks you want to remain friends with for years. And, of course, a few you plot to kill.

Some guides reach a toxic level of DBOS sooner than others, and it's the job of the ranch owner or "Head Dude Wrangler" (HDW) to pull them off the line before they sock some surly dude. Some guides seem to have the gentle and infinitely patient personality required to make a full time career out of it. Generally, however, it pays little, and you must choose the occupation because you simply love horses, people and riding, and for no other reason.

I stopped guiding dudes several years ago. And I'd never be tempted to slip back into it again. I can almost guarantee it.