SPRINGDALE — Hard: Pulling a young, 50-pound, bleating, bawling goat with horns — that doesn’t want to go — into the rodeo arena.
Harder: Putting on the goat a size XL pair of purple boxer shorts.
Hardest: Pulling that goat — boxers still attached — over the finish line before everyone else.
Welcome to the world of goat dressing.
The Rodeo of the Ozarks sponsors this event for 7- to 9-year-old children each night of the rodeo, which runs today to Saturday at Parsons Stadium in Springdale. The goat show follows the popular mutton bustin’ event in the nightly lineup.
Cousins Makayla Hutter, 9, Desirae Sieber, 7, and Dylan Sieber, 9, all of Springdale, make up a team in this year’s competition. They showed how it was done Monday.
These half-pint cowpokes didn’t have much of a strategy going in, but they did assign jobs: Dylan would pull the rope, Makayla would hold the goat and Desirae would dress it.
At A Glance
Rodeo of the Ozarks
Each night, the Rodeo of the Ozarks will feature:
• Mutton bustin’: 6:30 p.m.
• Goat dressing: 7:30 p.m.
During the actual run, Kim Sieber, mom and aunt, yelled encouragement in the form of directions.
“It’s best to hold his head back and lay down on him,” she called. “Lift him up to get those pants on him.”
Dylan, who competed last year, looked like a pro holding the rope as the gate opened. He also insisted on gloves to protect his hands from rope burn. Desirae waved the purple boxers in the air as the goat pulled back.
Makayla, however, looked out of place. Instead of the jeans and boots her cousins wore, she sported a short denim skirt, pink flip flops and a white bow in her hair.
But when it was time, she proved to be as tough — or tougher — than any cowboy who will ride at the rodeo. She dug in her bare feet and soon was on her knees in the dirt, laying across the goat.
She showed no fear: “I’ll tackle him like I do one of my cousins.”
“Makayla, do it like you do me when you strangle me,” Dylan yelled as she wrestled with the animal.
The hardest part was pulling the goat out of the chute, Dylan said. And Desirae did an admirable job running along with the goat holding its pants up.
“I put it in a headlock. It was easy,” Makayla explained her part after the demonstration.
“We turned it upside down to put his pants on,” Desirae shared.
“Don’t let go of the rope,” Kim Sieber yelled. “You’ll have to chase it if you left go of the rope.”
The Sieber kids both tried mutton bustin’ when they were younger, but said they like this better.
“You get to actually do something,” Dylan said.
The show will be tougher than practice, however. More goats will fill the arena, as will adult organizers and herding dogs. The noise of the crowd could be deafening. The action will be as exciting as any rodeo event.
And, then, there are other goat dressers to beat.
The three fastest teams each night earn bragging rights and …
“I’m gonna get a hundred dollars,” said Tex Holt, a Rodeo of the Ozarks director. “I’m gonna split it between the three fastest teams each night.
“These kids get to be 7, 8, 9 … They like that cash,” he said, holding up an imaginary fan of money with a greedy grin.