Wild Ride!

Meet three people whose lives are inextricably wound up in a sport that for most is the stuff of movies and sports highlight reels: Monica Wilson, barrel-racing champion; Kelly Armstrong, one of the most exciting bull riders in North America; and Duane Daines, whose achievements as a bronco rider resulted in a horrific accident that now confines him to a wheelchair as a paraplegic.From the National Finals Rodeo in Houston, to the excitement of rodeo in Cheyenne, the Canadian Finals Rodeo, and the magnificence of the Calgary Stampede, the cowboys compete in a world of fear, pain, and the risk of serious injury, with a passion they talk openly about in this entertaining book. Wild Ride! is not just about the dark hours. It recounts how the sport gets "in your blood" to the point that it takes the performers away from their families for long periods time.In Wild Ride! you hear them gently debunk the myth of the glamorous life of the rodeo cowboy. And you laugh and cry with them as they recall the sometimes funny, sometimes sad stories experienced during the miles and miles of travel chasing their dreams and glory of victory. It's all here: the role of animals in rodeo; the relationship between the cowboy and animal as a partnership, not a battle; the falsehoods that animal activists have perpetuated about the treatment of animals in rodeo.David A. Poulsen is the author of 'Wild Ride!', published 2000 under ISBN 9781894454025 and ISBN 1894454022.