When we finally arrived in Morris for the final day of the Manitoba Stampede against all the odds we sighed a huge sigh of relief! The sun was shining and the street was lined with cars. We headed to the gate not really knowing what to expect and found a fun fair in the middle of a large field flanked by showgrounds. We paid our $44 and got a green armband that allowed us into all of the shows. We had a wander around and took in the craziness. Every single person wore either cowboy boots or a cowboy hat if not both, even the tiny toddlers wore hat, boots, jeans and chaps it was such a great atmosphere. We found the show ground and watched the heavy horse competition and the light horse competitions and then wandered to the stables to see the horses close up.

 The heavy horse were huge. Their bodies alone were taller than us, they must have been 7 feet tall. The ponies pranced and did their high kicks for the judges pulling the overfed riders in their little carts it was commical to watch.

We do-se-doed over to the other events including a petting zoo where we watched the kids handling all kinds of animals including baby goats, piglets, ducks, you name it, they had hold of it!! We wandered around and saw a couple of emu’s, one had a plaster on her neck where she had scratched it which looked like it would last about 2 minutes. We stroked the dogs and the piglets and saw the alpaca’s looking sarcastically at us while chewing the hay.

 At 2pm it was time for the main event the Manitoba Professional Rodeo, the Mutton Bustin’ championships, world championship pony chuckwagon and Chariot races and the Ride the Hide finals! We got our seats in the grandstand and waited for the magic to happen. The grandspeaker (lets call him Jeff for the sake of ease) announced the start of the show and 12 horses and riders came into the ring each carrying a sponsors flag. We could tell it was going to be a good day as the horses would NOT line up for love nor money, one of the girls fell off her horse (she was the coca cola flag carrier) and then I cried when they all stood and sang the Canadian national anthem.
The show truly got under way with quite randomly 10 dogs performing tricks from the Muttley Crew who were stars in Americas got talent. This was a great way to start the show and Bert the Dog trainer was the rodeo clown for the rest of the show.

Next up was the amazing Rodeo final. The men jump on a horse bare back and get sent out into the ring with it bucking all over the place! The competition is to see who stays on longest, gets off alive and makes it out of the ring with all of his limbs. It was scary to watch but the crowd loved it! After that was the tamer version of the rodeo (with saddles) and then it was time to slam dunk some small cows! (steer wrestling)

These men were absolutely crazy. They have a cow…well a small bull, they all had horns…in a pen and let it out, they chase after it on their horses, jump from the horse onto the bull and wrestle it to the ground!!!! The competition here is the fastest person to get the bull onto the floor and hold it there. I personally didnt think they would have many takers for this game but there they were, lined up awaiting their turn! They must have a death wish, diving onto a bull…surely all of your fleshy bits are at risk here, a horn in the kidney on a Sunday afternoon cant be high on anyones list but there they were!!
We thought that this must be as unhealth and safety as it could get but the next battle for the championship was in the Mutton Bustin category!

This was by far the funniest thing we have seen yet and we laughed even harder thinking of trying to arrange it back home! Mutton Bustin is a game for the kids! The youngest contestant was 3, the eldest 8. The kids are given a helmet and they put on a padded vest (that looked suspisciously like it was covered in the grabby part of velcro facing outwards), they are placed onto the back of a sheep which is then set loose into the ring with a good slap on the rump! The sheep obviously runs like the wind with this small child clinging on for grim death, most of them ended up hanging upside down off the sheeps tummy getting pounded in the helmet by its knees just trying to stay on the longest. The aim of the game as mentioned is to stay on your sheep the longest. We are still laughing about it now. I keep imagining my nephews having a go and how much they would love it!! Would you let your 3 year old compete in the Mutton Bustin category?? Comments below please! ! 

Anyway, the kids games over with (thank goodness, I thought they might give them a gun and tell them to practise shooting apples off each others heads next!) the big boys came back out to play.

Not having had enough of diving on bulls their next game was to lasoo the fleeing bull calf, jump off their horse, wrestle the calf to the ground and tie its legs with ‘piggin string’ (in the proper fashion), get back on their horse and make it walk backwards dragging the calf along on the end of its string! (no calves were harmed in the watching of this game though I wouldn’t fancy being one of them myself!). The national champion was first up and did all of the above in 3.6 seconds taking a new record! It was over so quickly and we couldn’t believe our eyes!

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any wilder they started the Ride the Hide finals. We’ve all seen some idiot on a mechanical bull being thrown around until their spine looks set to snap…that is reasonably amusing as you know that when they get thrown off onto the cushioned floor that the mechanical bull cannot trample them to death…however this is apparently half the fun!!!

So you guessed it…the ride the hide finals is the bucking bronco with a real life, full grown, angry bull (probably the dad of the baby bulls they had been jumping on earlier!)! We watched in amazement and with fear in our eyes as the rest of the crowd whooped and hollared as the silly men mounted the bulls bare back and tried to stay on the longest while it bucked like crazy! The riders are disqulified for touching the bull with their free hand or for falling off before 8 seconds is over! There were men flying everywhere! Some stayed on for a few seconds before they got flung to the ground and the threat of being stomped on, others showed off staying on for upto 10 seconds. The bulls were definitely the winners in this game as they threw men left right and centre and trotted off happy with their revenge.

We were exhausted after just watching all of these men take their lives into their own hands for the sake of entertaining their nation and were pleased when a few ladies came into the ring and raced around some barrels. We got our heart rates back to normal and headed back to the van quietly in shock from the days events.
We had to travel to Winnipeg that afternoon to the nearest campsite and we talked about the stampede all the way there. It was such a great day and although $44 was a chunk from our budget the experience was worth every penny.

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See what happens next in our wedding travel adventure!