Vegas Again

Photo by T.Donoghue

We were asked to be the color guard for the National Finals Rodeo again this year on Patriot Night which fell on 7 Dec. Because of the date, they gave the night a Pearl Harbor theme. We carried the colors in the opening ceremony and we escorted a stage coach into the arena at the half time show.

We drove up to Las Vegas on Monday which took about ten hours. We dropped the horses off at the arena stables, got our credentials, and then headed for the hotel. They put us up in the Gold Coast this year which was not as nice as the Orleans, but much closer to the arena. I brought eight horses this year with two being spares. We needed only four horses for the color guard, but six for the escort duty. The spares got a little time in the arena too just to see how they'd react. I rode the Wonder Horse in, but switched to Bob as Apache was much too excited about everything. He would have done the job, just not very well.

On Tuesday we spend about 30 minutes in the arena, just getting the horses accustomed to the environment. That evening, the sponsors had given us tickets to watch the rodeo, so after feeding the horses at 1600, we walked up to see the show. The seats were great. Afterwards, we saddled up the horses and got ready for the evening dress rehearsal. We managed to convince our horses to walk through the tunnel into the arena despite the noise, darkness, strobe lights, artificial fog, marching band and other distractions. We practiced for about an hour and a half. We didn't get back to the hotel until about midnight.

The next morning we had another quick rehearsal to practice the stagecoach escort duty and then wandered across the street to the Hofbrau House for lunch. The food was good, but the beer was excellent. We had a couple hours off to get a combat nap in back at the hotel and then it was back to the stables to prep for the evening show.

The color guard did well getting into the arena from the dreaded tunnel, but one of our horses moved out of position when the crowd roared--or maybe it was the strobe lights. Anyway, they all held together well enough during the national anthem, and the men and horses looked great.

I rode in the escort detail for the half time show, and again, the horses did pretty well. We trotted into the arena ahead of the stagecoach and all the horses did fine during this part. I convinced the NFR people to let us form a line abreast once we stopped to help the horses stay calm, but we still had one horse on the end move out of position for a second.

Regardless, the NFR people were very happy with our performance and hinted about having us return next year. I hope we get invited back. It is a hell of a lot of work, but a great experience for the troopers. We don't get much time to experience Las Vegas while we're there, but the experience of riding into a televised event in front of 18,000 very vocal and patriotic rodeo fans makes it a worthwhile trip.