The small, quaint town of Kiowa, Colorado is home to one of the most interesting cowboys I have met thus far in my endeavors. That cowboy is Cauy Allen Pennington. When Cauy isn’t at home working cattle and cowboyin’ he attends school down at Clarendon College. He studies ag business at good ol’ Harvard on the Hill as well as competes on the rodeo team where he team ropes and rides broncs at the college rodeos. He mainly focuses on the saddle bronc riding however, which is what he had always wanted to pursue from a young age. Growing up, Cauy watched his dad Cevey ride broncs and that heavily influenced his passion. He started roping in the 5th grade and once jr. high rodeo introduced the saddle bronc steer riding he picked up that event as well as a 7th grader. When asked why saddle bronc over any other event he responded with, “Before I first started riding, I always knew I wanted to ride broncs and do stuff that was crazy and wild that no one else did.” At 6 years old Cauy got his first taste of what it was like behind the bucking chutes when Jesse Bail let him pack his bronc saddle up behind the chutes at the Greeley Stampede and it seems like ever since then there was no turning back.
Although Cauy is young, he has experienced his fair share of rodeos traveling throughout high school to the CHSRA rodeos, pursuing college rodeo down in the Southwest Region, and most recently dipping his toe into the PRCA circuit. Summer 2021 was really the first time he got the opportunity to rodeo by himself. Cauy thoroughly enjoyed his time rodeoing over the summer making multitudes of lifelong memories, seeing new sights, meeting new people, and of course bashing some rank broncs along the way. “That was just a blast, just getting to drive all over the country, just seeing everything, taking in everything, getting on broncs.”
His approach towards every bronc he gets on is simple yet effective, “Just make sure everything’s right, nothings broke, and just get on and do what I know how to do and hope for the best. Ya just gotta be relaxed but aggressive. Gotta spend hours in practice and hours on the spur board. Then you just gotta trust it when you get on a bronc, just everything you know how to do.” Cauy’s goals are just like any other young bronc rider dreaming of making a career out of their passion. “Everyone growing up wants to be a world champ, I wanna be a world champ. A multiple time world champ. You know, win the (NFR) average multiple times. Just do everything every young kid wants to do growing up when they’re riding broncs. Just be a winner. In the long run I’m gonna wanna go back and run cattle on our family’s ranch pretty much. Use my rodeo career, get some of those big rodeo wins and set myself up for the rest of my life running cattle and shit. Other than that, I don’t really have much goals, I just wanna ride broncs and run cows.”
As we sat there in Big Spring, Texas chatting it up about his adventures Cauy started to laugh. “Oh, the funniest thing was, so we’re in Belle Fouche right, and I landed on my head and don’t know where I’m at and we go back there (behind the chutes) and there’s some of these kids going around in the back asking for autographs and I’m left-handed and this kid asks me for this autograph, and I go right-handed and this guy like “Cauy aren’t you left-handed?” “I was like, “Yeah” he goes, “You just signed that autograph right-handed” then after that we go over to the tent where they give you the food and the hospitality and were eating there and this lady walks up, and she goes “Do you know Cevey Pennington?” I was like “Yeah, I know Cevey Pennington, like what’s it to ya?” And she goes “Well that’s all I had to ask” and walked off. My dad’s from up around there but.” Then after some coaxing I got a couple more quick stories out of him. “Oh fuck we had a ball didn’t we? There we were once again along the lost prairie swinging through the rafters. Swinging from the chandeliers having us a great time and these guys from Lubbock, Texas tried to cut us down. Ah I’m just messing with you.”
“One of my greatest memories though. I probably made the best bronc ride of my life in Mitchell, South Dakota last summer. We went to the bar about 45 minutes down the road from where we were at and we were just hanging out, sitting at the bar, having a good time and we ordered pizza. We eat some dinner and the funniest part about this is I go “Alright Dylan I’m headed to bed,” and I go crawl in the Capri and I’m sleeping, and he brings this chick back in there and they’re doing whatever they’re doing and all of a sudden, the pickup starts up and Dylan and I are the only two who drove there to start off with. Turns out it was the bar owner, jumps in the driver’s seat of this pickup and was gonna drive us out from in front of this bar because it’s “bad for business.” Next thing we know we wake up the next morning and Dylan throws it in reverse and it’s making some noises and we’re stuck. Dylan’s like “what the hell”, and we’re stuck in a damn fire pit at the campground.”
Now if you’ve had the opportunity to party it up in Clarendon, Texas with CC Nation you’ve likely made a trip to the Dawg House a time or two and in the house there’s a sign right above the front door that says, “Come Again.” So, for those of us who were wondering, here’s how it came about. “After Vernon I got bucked off, didn’t make the short round and Brett walks up and he goes “Hey I got a deal for you guys down in Weatherford. You’ll get on and it’ll pay a little bit.” So we cruise on down to Weatherford and we get there and we’re just hanging out and having a good time and they had an open bar and I had a few drinks and we’re getting ready to head out and go stay where we’re staying that night and we’re driving out the front gates and there’s this welcome sign and one side says, “Thank you for coming to the Parker County Sheriff’s Posse and then on the other side it says, “Thank you for coming” or “Come Again” or something. So, I’m like we gotta steal that for the casa in old Clarendon so I bailed out and grabbed the sign. We grabbed like three of them. I don’t know what happened to the other two, but it was a good time.”
Cauy has got quite the future ahead of him that I am sure will be full of rank bronc rides, wild nights, and some fantastic stories. In the meantime, keep a look out for him in the PRCA circuit and maybe just maybe one day when he’s a famous world champ we can catch back up, do this all again and share even more rank tales from the rodeo trail.
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