A couple of warm days out on the Middle Fork got me to thinking about horses.

We’d “borrowed” a couple of horses for a week last summer from Larry, and decided they seemed right at home in the lower pasture. Larry wasn’t in a donating mood, so we lost our livestock after a few days.

All winter, I’ve been muttering to Scotta about horses. Maybe it’s time, I said, to get our own for the Boulder Creek Ranch.

Her hearing seems to fade every time I bring up the topic. Or else I start speaking kind of quiet so I don’t provoke any on-the-record objection. I’m not sure which.

But I keep an eye out for a chance to learn about horses, and Seneca had one last weekend.

Sure, it was the annual stickhorse rodeo. Laugh if you will, but when you know nothing about horses, learning anything is a step forward.

One warning I’d been given over recent months is that horses are tricky to load for travel. Nonsense. My two stick horses followed me right into the truck. They didn’t as much as whinny. They didn’t stomp or bite. They just looked at me glassy-eyed.

After Scotta and I pulled up to the Seneca School, I decided to leave the horses loaded. I wanted to check out the competition and the stakes first.

Inside, I could see competition was going to be mean. A rodeo arena had been staked out in the gym, with two polka-dotted pink ribbons for fencing, and hay bales for fence posts. Inside the arena, kids from preschool to middle school were galloping about, warming up their mounts. Half had cowboy hats, and a few wore chaps, bracing for a rough day in the arena.

The contestants all had numbered bibs tacked to the backs of their shirts. I spotted no more than three adults with numbers. That seemed light competition for the adult categories. I went back and forth about getting my horses out of the truck and plunking down my entry fee. Since I was new to stick rodeo, I chose to sit this one out and see how the adults played out. Good thing I did, as you’ll see.

The rodeo had four competitions – the bronc riding, pole bending, barrel racing, and a Calcutta team race. Jack Southworth took up the mike as rodeo announcer, sitting beneath a rodeo-sized banner for Wrangler Jeans. He had two judges and two pick-up men, sitting astride their own stick ponies, waiting to work.

Now, I was guessing beforehand how you did bronc riding indoors on a stick pony. The first competitor erased the puzzlement. The idea, apparently, is to dash into the arena, and spin and wheel as if your stick pony was a buckin’ bronc. Mostly, what happened is the kids got dizzy.

Most staggered to the end of their eight-second ride still standing. But I know people really come to rodeos to see accidents, and Seneca’s crowd wasn’t disappointed. A girl feigned being bucked off. No worry. Medics rushed out in the ambulance – the neighborhood red wagon. After some hasty doctoring, the poor dear was dropped into the ambulance and hauled out of the arena.

Apparently stick ponies were in short supply, so competitors shared. Not a problem for these mounts, as Southworth noted. “We ride the same horse again and again and again and he never gets tired,” he said. I thought to myself: That’s the kind of horse we need for Boulder Creek Ranch.

Every ride got judged if they made the time, and scores in the 90s were common. Judges got a might technical, scoring one rider as a 91.3645. It may be stick rodeo, but that doesn’t mean precision goes out the window.

The bronc riding got over with no one headed for the hospital. Not a single adult competed. Hmmm. I could have won just for showing up in the arena.

Then it was on to the pole bending. The youngest kids were a little uncertain about this. “We’ve got some mothers. We don’t have the kids,” Southworth announced. Finally, a couple of moms braved the crowd to lead their kids through the route. And one young girl led a string of toddlers wearily through the poles.

Rodeo barrels were brought in for the barrel racing, and a flag-dropping arena man stopped and started the official timing. The kids for the most part had the course figured out. A few times kids circled their ponies around the barrels completely before moving on. Determined, but not the way to a fast time.

Then came the Calcutta event. Folks in the audience bid to “own” one of the teams and a split of the winning pot. The four teams, backed by a $225 pot, raced through with remarkably similar times. In the end, the winning team got its 20 percent, the Seneca School got its 40 percent, and “team owner” Ken Olsen of Old West Federal Credit Union kicked back to the school his share of the pot.

The rodeo started with the grand entry – kids galloping two-by-two around the ring to raucous country music. With the rodeo queen and her two princesses holding tiny U.S. flags, young Derrik Rider sang the national anthem, his white cowboy hat over his heart. He did better than some folks I’ve heard kicking off NBA games.

The finish came with the stick-horse drill team. Eight kids did loops, crossing patterns, and more. Their mounts seemed to be well trained, for there were no spills and no, um, arena accidents.

By day’s end, Seneca School did okay from entry fees, the auction, chili feed, and brisk business at the Broomstick Bakery. The riders all seemed happy, regardless of whether they posted winning times.

I was glad I hadn’t registered to compete in the adult category for the solo events. My name would have been the only one called. I would have won by default. And I would have won months of ribbing around Grant County. No thanks. Next year, my stick horses stay home so I’m not even tempted to enter.

*Les Zaitz writes occasionally about ranch life.