RODEO TRICK RIDER RESCUED HER HORSE

The relationship between rodeo trick rider and horse is special because the horse has to be able to think without guidance from the rider. Between trick rider Jaye Anders and her horse, Shiloh, the bond is even stronger because Anders rescued Shiloh from death.

She is one of four women trick riders whose acrobatic feats will be featured in the Longhorn World Championship Rodeo beginning Friday and continuing Saturday and Sunday at the Show Me Center. The competitions start at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Anders first heard about Shiloh from the woman who had taught her trick riding.

"He had been starved and abused by his previous owner, and the Humane Society was going to put him to sleep," Anders said. "He had been so badly beaten he was terrified of his own shadow."

Anders didn't need a horse but, she says, "Sometimes paths cross when they're supposed to."

She spent a year returning him to health and training him. Now she considers Shiloh the best trick riding horse in rodeo.

Growing up in Malden, riding horses was only a hobby to Anders. Her father owned a small chain of grocery stores and was a gentleman farmer. She went to Southeast in 1972 to study journalism, then completed her degree at Arkansas State.

Now as a member of the Longhorn Pony Express trick riding team, Anders also can write her own press releases.

Anders became a real estate appraiser after college. She also has had incarnations as a jockey, a motocross racer and a gymnastics teacher. The broken bones incurred in trick riding are not new to her.

Trick riding is a combination of performing, athletic ability, horsemanship and danger, she says. "It can be very dangerous. No matter how many times you perform a trick there are several elements that can go wrong."

Trick riding hooked her one day when she was attending a rodeo. She went home and started practicing with her barrel horse. After a year, she says, "I had learned just enough to kill myself."

So she called up a stock contractor, told him she was a trick rider and needed to work some rodeos. Only afterward did she confess this was her first performance. She was hooked deeper.

"Slowly I let everything else go to pursue this craziness called rodeo," she says.

Anders has been with Longhorn World Championship Rodeo for seven years now. Her husband, Steve Kukowski, is the operations manager for the rodeo. They live at the Longhorn ranch at White's Creek, Tenn., just outside Nashville.

She also works with other rodeos, has a comedy dog act and does tricks with ropes and whips.

This year, the four Longhorn Pony Express riders will recreate the performances of trick riders of the early 20th century. In her own signature trick she will ride upside down and pick up a cowboy hat from the arena floor.

At the end, she and the other trick riders will stand atop their running horses carrying American flags in a trick called the "Ride for Freedom."