Can these people possibly slither any lower?
If you go to the "Animal Care" page of the Cheyenne Frontier Days (CFD) website, you'll read all about the rodeo's "Commitment to Animal Care," and if you didn't know about all the cruel, injurious and sometimes deadly abuses to the rodeo animals, you might be fooled. But the latest CFD debacle stands as a wonderful testament to the truth about the treatment of rodeo animals.
Cheyenne is a place where jerk-downs traditionally abound, and SHARK has the graphic and sometimes gruesome video documentation to prove it. So while Cheyenne claims that it "does not condone animal abuse," that is nonsensical propaganda. The rodeo's allowance of jerk-downs alone prove that, not to mention steer busting, the wild horse race and other cruelty.
A few days ago we noticed that CFD was claiming it has a "no-jerk-down" rule. A jerk-down is a cruel and sometimes deadly technique of roping a young calf over so violently that the victim literally is shot backward, all four feet off the ground. The victim lands on her head, neck and/or back. Broken necks, legs, backs and internal injuries can result.
We were pleased to see that Cheyenne had apparently banned at least this obvious abuse against animals who are only a few months old. But, as is so often the case with rodeo thugs, things are not what they appeared. We sent an email to CFD officials asking for details about the new no-jerk-down rule, and we alerted the local media. What happened next was so, well, so rodeo.
CFD officials simply removed the no-jerk-down ban from the website. It was that simple. It is now gone. That's how it works in the rodeo mafia. They lie about how the animals are treated, and when you corner them, they simply change the lie. Of course did not respond to us; they don't have the courage or integrity to do that.
Our weapon against rodeos is simply the truth as seen in the camera's eye. And there is nothing the rodeo mafia fears more than the truth.
There is a line on CFD's website that reads as follows:
"We care about all our athletes, the two-legged ones and the four-legged ones, and anyone who claims otherwise just doesn't know us."
That's not true. Over the past five years of documenting the rodeo, I HAVE gotten to know these people, not to mention the seventeen years that we've documented and exposed abuse at rodeos from coast to coast. Not personally, because they don't have the courage to interact with us. But I know them by their deeds - by their mistreatment of animals, by their lies about the mistreatment, their cover-ups of animal injuries and deaths. SHARK investigators see right past the paper-thin veneer. We DO know CFD folk - and that is exactly why they fear and hate us so.
Again this year, in just a couple weeks, SHARK investigators will document and expose the cruel cowards who produce the cruel and cowardly Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. And this year, counter to the claims of CFD's website that it "does not condone animal abuse," young babies who should still be with their mothers will be jerked down - violently flipped backwards with such force that some will be injured and worse.
