EDMONTON – Cattle penning is a sport the whole Rusnak family enjoys.
But they’re not stupid. They don’t do it on the same team.
“It would maybe cause a divorce,” joked Florence Rusnak. “I know it would if I was riding with my husband. It’s bad enough with him judging.”
Florence rides with an all-female team. Husband Fred is a judge, and son Brian and 16-year-old daughter Shawna ride together.
All four took part in the cattle penning competition at Farmfair International held here Nov. 2-10.
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Cattle penning made its debut more than a decade ago in Calgary, but has recently picked up momentum in central and northern Alberta.
Teams of three riders are given 90 seconds to separate three specific cattle from a small group and pen them at the opposite end of the arena.
A good proportion of the riders are women, and many are family teams.
Brian Rusnak said cattle penning is a good family sport, as long as teammates understand the power of positive dishonesty.
“We get along pretty good,” he said about his relationship with Shawna. “You always tell her how good she does even when she does bad. If you say anything bad to her she pouts. She does the same for me.”
Family feuds
Shawna said her dad has the same problem in cattle penning with his mother that her grandfather does.
“They fight,” she said.
Brian said he thinks his mother “wants to be the boss. That’s from raising me, I guess. We used to ride together. We don’t anymore. We get along like gas and fire out there.”
Florence and her teammates Cindy Prescott and Kerrie Simpson seem a happy group. But don’t let that fool you, they say.
“We’re friends, sometimes,” said Florence. “When we win we’re friends. When we don’t, we pout.”
Kerrie, a secretary in Edmonton, said she thinks the sport is growing because it is as much a social gathering as a competition.
Friends join forces
Florence said they didn’t intentionally design an all-female team. The three were friends before they took up cattle penning, so it made sense to ride together.
The cattle penning association had a female section, but dropped it because there were only three teams. The women rejoined the main section and say there is no difference between genders when it comes to results.
“The cattle humble everybody,” said Prescott.
Even if Brian and his mom were able to compete better together, he doesn’t think he’d want to ride on her team.
“They all got to wear the same clothes, that’s where I draw the line,” he said.
