Willy

I just heard that the rodeo world is retiring yet another great horse.  The doggin' horse Willy is set to retire at the end of the Stampede this year.  He's a great horse that no less than 9 guys used at the Stampede last year, most of them making it to the finals on the last Sunday.  A multiple winner of both Canadian and World championships he will be sorely missed, but at 24 years old and starting to get sore hocks, I guess it's time to put the old guy out to pasture. 

For those of you who don't know the sport, a steer is loaded in to the chute with the dogger on one side and the hazer on the other.  When the chute opens, the steer runs out, headed straight down the arena (that's the plan), the dogger catches up to the steer and slides off his horse (in this case Willy), and wrestles the steer to the ground.  That's if everything goes according to plan.  On most occasions the steer veers away from the doggin' horse and off to the right.  This is when the hazing horse comes in to play, trying to keep him straight for the dogger.  A good run happens within 4 seconds or so, with some times so far at the Stampede being in the low 3 seconds.  Wow, that's rapid!  Blink and you miss it.

I know, it looks lazy of me, but I've added a link to an article about steer wrestling and about Willy that explains it a whole lot better than I did.  And sorry, that's not Willy in the picture.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2008/07/11/calgary-stampede-poulsen7.html

found another one:
http://sports.espn.go.com/rodeo/news/story?id=4715924#top