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pair attends bull dogging school
Over the weekend, Owen McIntire and Ellie Nuxoll traveled to Toppenish, Washington for the Annual Les Patterson Family Bull Dogging School! They both participated in the 3-Day Chute Dogging part of the school. Chute dogging is a rodeo event related to steer wrestling, however, the competitor starts the event in a bucking (side) chute with the steer as opposed to grabbing onto the steer from horseback. The event is designed to give beginners a chance to prepare for the big known rodeo event as steer wrestling. Ellie and Owen were part of a handful of students that had the opportunity to learn from retired NFR (National Finals Rodeo) qualifiers and well known named cowboys such as Pat Nogle, Brian West, Tony Currin, Joel Knapp, Erik Johnson, and Rob Juker. Novice and advance chute doggers, and bull doggers were separated into groups. Ellie and Owen’s (novice) weekend consists of teaching the students how to position your body, feet and how to grab the horns properly on a metal steer dummy off the ground, to using a metal horse dummy and putting the ability to dismount from the horse to the steer. Graduating from the metal dummies, they moved on to live steers. Slinging the 300-400 pound steers sure put smiles that grinded from ear to ear on Ellie and Owen’s faces, leaving them with sore but stronger muscles! Sunday ended the school with a jackpot, in which all students were timed off two head of cattle and a buckle was giving to the champion with fastest times. Owen slid his boots and hooked the horns the fastest on both of his steers and would have scored the buckle that was awarded, but only attended the school 2 of the three days. Disappointing factor, but he still walked home with a little jingle in his pocket. Ellie threw her steers with a little hiccup on her second run, but felt accomplished being the only girl attending and placing 4th. Owen is a son of Daniel & Leslie McIntire and Ellie is a daughter Renee & Anthony Verdino and Max Nuxoll. 
Owen McIntire bull dogs a steer. 
Ellie Nuxoll bulldogs a steer. 
Ellie and Owen with one of their isntructors. 
Owen practices on a mockup. All photos by Renee Duman. |
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