MESA — Oscar is looking for a sparring partner. The brown 9-year-old quarter horse has completed his warm-ups: cantering, start-stopping, wheel-turning and backpedaling.
Now, with owner Steve Greenberg astride him, Oscar lopes and shuffles like a boxer in the yellow dust cloud of the Scottsdale corral, waiting on a worthy opponent.
His first cow is not it. Once she sees Oscar, the 600-pound black Angus noses back to the gate like she entered the wrong room. She lopes away. Oscar cuts a parallel path. She bolts right, then left, faster and faster, but Oscar is too quick. Slicing the corral in laser-straight vectors, he goes wherever she wants — and gets there first. In less than a minute, she says "whatever" with the flip of a red-tagged ear and turns to the bullpen for help.
"These cows are sour," Greenberg calls, opening the gate. "We may have to go through a lot of 'em to give him a workout."
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It takes 90 minutes — and six more winded, ticked-off cows — for Oscar to get his workout. The next day they leave for Texas, to compete at the National Reined Cow Horse Association's World's Greatest Horseman Tournament.
The cows couldn't be more thrilled.
"I've been around cattle all my life," says Greenberg, a 51-year-old cattle futures dealer. "Ranching. Roping. I rodeoed for a while. But it took my wife to get me into cow horse riding."
Cow horse is six-legged teamwork: Rider and mount work together to maneuver cattle through a series of precise exercises. Greenberg compares the footwork to basketball's one-on-one defense. "Today, we'll be working cows along the fence. Which is trapping a cow and controlling where it goes."
Cows Nos. 3, 4 and 5 will never lead a stampede. One by one, they avoid Oscar like a salesman at a Christmas party. But Oscar perks his ears and takes care of business. Within minutes, each cow is a breathless study in black leather resignation.
Like her predecessors, Cow No. 7 lopes halfheartedly at first. Then, with deceptive quickness, she ducks her head and takes off at speed. Oscar wheels in pursuit. She reverses again, then stops, feigning exhaustion — then bolts again. Greenberg bobs in the saddle, reining the horse in tight, cryptic movements as Oscar's legs cut yellow contrails back and forth across the corral. Horse and rider have disappeared in a dusty cloud by the time No. 7 packs it in.
"Now that," Greenberg calls, "is something like a live cow."
The National Reined Cow Horse Association works to preserve and celebrate the cowboy traditions that defined Western culture in the 19th century. The Stephenville Championship summons the best of the professional circuit, as well as nonpros like Greenberg and Oscar, who place in the top 10 of at least three divisional competitions. As their training concluded on Valentine's Day, horse and rider braced for a 16-hour trailer trip into the heart of Texas — and a shot at glory on Feb. 22.
"It's fun, but it can be humbling, too," he says. "You think you know your horse, go to town, and it's a different story."
The World's Greatest Horseman Competition did not humble them, but the road there almost did. "Texas is miserable in the winter," Greenberg says, a month later. "It rained so hard, my feet were never dry. Crawled into that saddle sick as a dog." Team Oscar had every excuse to fade early — but it didn't.
"Oscar did so good in the preliminary round," he says. "We were second in the division at the end of that first day." But their legs and luck couldn't hold in the championship. "The preliminaries took it out of him, and we drew a bad cow. It wouldn't honor us and ran under the horse." Oscar and Greenberg left Stephenville with eighth place. "And we broke down on the way home."
But Greenberg is pleased with the effort. "Oscar tried real hard," he says. "Making the finals is what you live for. The top 10? Hey, that's quite an achievement."
Greenberg sees a future for them in roping. "Oscar would be great in team roping. He's a good 'head horse,' " he chuckles. "That'll be his second career."
