Mark Stallings

Bull rider Chance Smart shows a young boy how to throw a rope.

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LAS VEGAS — Laura Kalinevitch teaches kids who have problems: autism, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), serious emotional disturbances. They're young — third- through fifth-graders — but some act out with such rage and violence that they're hospitalized, sometimes over a weekend, and back at school on Monday.

"Some of my students live with their families, but a lot of them live in group homes," said Kalinevitch, who teaches at Las Vegas' Variety School. "The behavior's so bad that the parents or grandparents can't handle it."

She said this on the arena floor of the Thomas & Mack Center on the morning before Round Five of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. All around were her students and a couple of dozen other physically and cognitively disabled kids enjoying the PRCA Exceptional Rodeo, laughing, playing and horsing around.

And for a moment, at least, they were carefree.

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With cowboys and bullfighters and others guiding them, and with perhaps a hundred other kids watching from the stands, they steered stickhorses as a barrel racer would, weaving among three barrels. They climbed aboard a bull and a saddle bronc — each a bale of hay covered in cloth, with an overstuffed head and facial features made of felt — that see-sawed on saw horses.

They lassoed hay-bale steers. They stood still while barrel man Keith Isley spun a lariat around them, wedding ring style.

They took turns riding horses named Gunsmoke and Possum. For some, such as a girl named Destiny, whose cerebral palsy confines her to a wheelchair, the feeling of the horses' gait was a rare sensation akin to walking.

"The simplest things in life are what these kids look forward to," said barrel racer Shelley Murphy, one of about 60 rodeo personnel to show up for the event. "It makes you feel good that we can allow them to have that feeling."

The Exceptional Rodeo has been a mainstay at the WNFR since 1983. That was when PRCA cowboys wanting a charitable event for disabled children approached Ruth Dismuke-Blakely, a speech pathologist who runs a hippotherapy^* center in New Mexico. She has been organizing Exceptional Rodeos for the PRCA since.

For the kids, it's a chance to play rodeo, get a small trophy, belt a "yee-haw" into a public address system. Plus, what kid doesn't love horses and cowboys?

For those cowboys, it's a chance to make an impression on kids who, through no fault of their own, will never grow up to ride a bull or wrestle a steer.

"Cowboys," Dismuke-Blakely said, "understand the luck of the draw."

At the end of the rodeo, the kids and cowboys sign photos for one another. Some actually keep in touch. Dismuke-Blakely said a bull rider from that first Exceptional Rodeo in Oklahoma City 25 years ago still keeps in touch with the kid, Danny, he met that day.

"You can see these kids have so much fun," Isley said between lasso demonstrations. "And not necessarily for who we are. They have no idea who these people are. They're just happy to meet cowboys."

And frankly, there aren't many parties anywhere attended by both Miss Rodeo America (the newly crowned and amply sequined Maegan Ridley) and Smokey the Bear (dapper as always, barefoot and shirtless in jeans and ranger's hat).

The day also allowed some kids to indulge their inner hams. Given a minute with the mic as she accepted her trophy, one girl sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to the arena. Another picked up the same tune and sang the alphabet.

Asked what he had been up to, a 10-year-old boy named Jordano replied, "Practically everything, because it's all about adventure and concentration."

It was his first time on a horse. His ruling: "Fun."

His favorite part of the day: "Everything."

"It's something that they'll never experience again in the school year," said Kalinevitch, the teacher. "They're not going to go horseback riding or be roping cows or have this kind of stuff to play with. No one's going to give them trophies, cowboy hats, the shirts. They'll be wanting to wear them to school every day."

^* The American Hippotherapy Association defines hippotherapy as "a physical, occupational, and speech-language therapy treatment strategy that utilizes equine movement as part of an integrated intervention program to achieve functional outcomes."

For more information on hippotherapy, visit the Web site of the American Hippotherapy Association at www.americanhippotherapyassociation.org

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