on the road again — Hello | Lindsay Branquinho

I find that, generally speaking, people in our lives fall into two categories. One: people who come from a rodeo, western, or ranching background and thus understand what it means for us that Luke is a full time rodeo cowboy. Or two: people to whom that lifestyle is completely foreign and so it makes no sense.

See, we don’t exactly live in a part of the country where we are near very many other families that are in our shoes (er, boots, I suppose). When people ask me what my husband does for a living, and I say that he’s a professional steer wrestler, I might as well be saying, “Oh, he’s a dragon slayer” or something else equally fictional. I get it and I don’t blame anyone for this reaction! If you don’t come from the western world or haven’t been around rodeo, it does kind of sound like a made up occupation. Then, should I try to explain what it is he actually does - well you try to describe bulldogging to someone that’s never seen it - it sounds insane. Also, 90% of the time I guarantee that they leave the conversation thinking he’s a bull rider (this is exceptionally funny if you’ve ever seen Luke in comparison to an actual bull rider). If I say my husband travels a lot for work, it’s assumed that I mean he’s gone for a few days here and there.

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, people usually have a lot of questions. I know a lot of rodeo families do things differently, and I can certainly only speak to our specific situation but I thought I’d start by giving a rundown of what a rodeo year is like for us.

Luke will usually leave for the new rodeo year in mid-January and will be gone until early April. Luckily most of the Spring rodeos that he goes to throughout April and May are in or around California so he gets to be home more this time of year; usually only having to be gone about half of the week. Then come mid June he will leave again for the Summer run, which is every cowboy’s busiest time of the year. Once he leaves for the summer, he won’t be back home until the end of September when the season ends. Fall is quiet and he’s only gone for long weekends through October and November. December is the finals, which is when rodeo’s world champions are determined, and what every one of these guys and girls spend the previous 11 months working towards.

The boys and I don’t travel with Luke. The older two boys are in school obviously and also play a lot of sports, and I own my own clothing boutique, so it’s just an impossibility for us. I have so much respect for the families that do travel together, that’s not an easy thing to do! Luke does take his own rig but bulldoggers notoriously travel in packs which means he’s always with a trailer full of other guys. Please imagine me surviving in a living quarters trailer (one very small bathroom) with my husband, 3 children, and 2-3 other men. I’ll wait for you to stop laughing…

After we had children the way Luke rodeos changed a lot. Now, when he has a stretch where he doesn’t have any rodeos he will try to fly home for a few days here and there. He is so great about this. He travels so much that I would totally understand if he did everything he could to avoid any additional traveling. But instead, he’s never too tired to take a redeye flight or drive all night to come see us, even when it’s for just a few hours. His schedule is rarely determined more than a couple weeks in advance, so planning ahead as to when and where we might be able to go see him, is never a straight forward thing.

Steer wrestling is his job, but the lifestyle that comes along with it affects our entire family. We all make sacrifices to get him down the road, and then you just cross your fingers and hope that it’s going to pay off in the end. The truth is that it’s not always easy. But it’s not always hard either. The nature of being a rodeo cowboy is really high highs and really low lows - and there’s really no secret to knowing how to navigate it. Most of the time it’s just a matter of figuring out how to ride the wave, and trusting that wherever you are is right where God has intended for you to be. Much the same way it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entire family to wrestle a steer.