About Author Cindy K. Roberts
 or

 Everything I learned in life, I learned from my cross eyed mule.
(Focus, focus, focus.) 

"Rebellious to this day because her parents insisted that she adjust to kindergarten and attend school...Cindy Roberts shows her independence by riding her paint horse and mules with other kindergarten outlaws."

I was dropped on a manure pile at a very young age and raised with wild horses...that  started my obsession with centering my life around cowboy heroes and equine events.  My countless hours in the saddle, watching afternoon episodes of Bonanza and being drawn to flashy denim like Dolly pretty much describes my childhood...that and my lacking in common sense. A confused child with no direction, I turned to horses and mules for knowledge and wisdom.  [And I am still dazed.]  The other stuff is boring and wouldn’t interest you...so we’ll move on to the day I was rescued by a lawless mule with three 6’s carved on her head, named  Rawhide. We became friends and that is when I learned the divine secret to...the hybrid code.  Teaching me everything I know about mules and the true meaning to life, Rawhide has opened the door to my future and many corral gates for her buddies. During the times we had communication problems, I attended The Meredeth Manor Equine College, worked with clinicians and watched boring horse training videos.  Rawhide’s teachings gave me a deep understanding of all equines and a profound connection with mules which enabled me to raise and train saddle mules and to film The Behavior & Training Of The Saddle Mule video/DVD After the film and winning 3 grand  championships, Rawhide‘s stardom increased her popularity along with photo opportunities.  On bad hair days, it is sometimes hard to convince horse owners that just a short time ago Rawhide was a pinup girl with her own poster sales.  Rawhide has her own line of picnic baskets, t-shirts and note cards being marketed and she’s already learned that the competition is getting younger.  Being a centerfold mule does have its ups and downs.

I started showing my ass in 1987 -  when Rawhide’s true career began...she  took 5th place out of 120 horses at the Bridle Spur Hunter Pace.  Rawhide is used to being snubbed...but believes she is due her hard earned celebrity status.   After being slighted by hoity toity show riders, Rawhide decided  taking dressage lessons while riding under the well renowned Grand Prix instructor Frank Grelo, would be the logical thing to do. 

Co-hosting and producing the radio show “Horse Sense” unbridled my desire to learn more about those in the equine industry.  This enabled me to meet equine greats such as Monty Roberts, Pat Parelli and trick horse trainer Carole Fletcher as well as many others. 

To reduce stress in my life, I took a shot at  Cowboy Mounted Shooting...but  the competitive nature of the sport enticed our club members into aggression...which shifted the public dinner meetings into a night time brawl, similar to that seen in a wild west show.  This caused us to be thrown out of the finer restaurants where we held our meetings. Giving up on finding new places to meet and wanting to lower our cholesterol,  we decided to dissolve the club. To this day, there are some members still at large that are forced to be drifters...they stay on the move riding fast horses.  

In 2002, Rawhide pretended she had arthritis and I began looking for another mount.  After several equine purchases and trading horses,  a paint horse named "Cowboy" loped into my life.  Things haven’t been the same since, especially my checking account.  In the meantime, Rawhide developed a recent passion of galloping in the pasture with her new buddies and she has never looked back. 

Cowboy is good by horse standards but he's immature for his age.  He can whip a snarling coyote but he can't stare down the neighbor's dog...so I worked at saving his image and encourage him to live up to his potential by taking him out west. Today, Cowboy's large ego, good looks and debonair style gives him enough confidence for him to believe that some day he will have his own TV talk show.  His delectable taste in  blondes keeps him busy with his social schedule at the barn...so now I must enforce his 9:00 curfew.   

Older, wiser and having a flair for adventure along with a fascination for chiggers, I spend time with Cowboy and Rawhide on trail rides in the Bighorn  and Rocky Mountains. When I am bored, I practice voodoo on barn pigeons and torture horse flies to fuel my inner strength. 

I did get the idea to plan Western Weddings.   However, most of my clients major interests are in my offering a mail order bride service on the Internet and honestly, housing 50 immigrant women in my barn just doesn't appeal to me. 

My secret life, as an experienced and  proven bartender with a love for baking has enticed me to write my 2nd cookbook The Rhinestone Cowgirl Cookbook.  Filled with recipes  that feature alcohol as the main ingredient, my attorney advised me to put a warning label on the book cover.  Two cookie intoxications and one accidental  fire later, I inserted cautionary notes to my readers along with a liquor/liqueur substitution page and now successful book sales should prove that I am not a complete failure and utter embarrassment to my family and friends. 

(Meet my family.)

Bartending is fun and hard work but I also kept a day job to have health insurance; working for a circuit judge that had a lot of patience.  I was a nervous, professional looking clerk during the day, that dropped file folders on the floor and ran for coffee.  At night I turned into a bartending, superhero that dressed like cat woman.  I  was too creative for my legal clerk job where the women hated me, all except for Lavonne from the fifth floor. Lavonne liked to laugh.

One winter, with nothing else better to do, I developed Every Cowboy's Dream with the help of a couple of cute guys, that never saw a horse or jingle bob spurs other than dream about them.  Clearly that web site was heading for the gutter, so I took the reins back into my own hands, burned www.everycowboysdream.com and left for Mexico to think things over.  While on a date with Juan Manuel Padillia riding through downtown Mexico on his one seater bicycle, I had time to think.  Two enchiladas and three margaritas later, I was able to develop a chest cold and Every Cowgirl's Dream (www.everycowgirlsdream.com).

I returned to the United States and left both my jobs to focus on Every Cowgirl's Dream.  In between corporate meetings on horse back I am able to write mule training books (that works on husbands too.)   The countless emails I receive asking for my advice and expertise on how to work with mules spurred me to publish Answers To Your Mule Questions - A Common Sense Guide To Understanding The Mule's Point of View.  Successful book sales allows Rawhide to afford a new satellite dish - so she can enjoy the Time Warner movie classics of Francis The Talking Mule.  

To help fight winter hysteria, I write amusing articles, watch Dog The Bounty Hunter on TV while cleaning my guns and I test new remedies for dry skin.  

Now, published in several equine publications along with a high fiber diet, keeps me active and moving in different directions. My equine sensory perception tells me I am gifted but my low tolerance for flies and sleepless nights keeps me designing web pages throughout the night. And so... In search of adventure I chase after western stars on and off the prairie to feature in my entertaining articles that are offered for publication. 

I have made a lot of friends while riding on the trail but they are all sheepish about our friendship and wish to be anonymous - so I have to make up silly names like Giddyup, Runaway Ruby, Captain Thom, Paramount Peggy, Cactus Cate, Cowboy Crash and others to protect the innocent while writing about my exploits.   

Refusing to waste my creative talents, I developed a line of greeting cards for every occasion, featuring the donkey, horse and mule.  Smart-Ass Greetings© features birthday cards, get well cards, anniversary cards and divorce cards.  Words cannot describe how every woman feels about divorce, so I did the best I could with my own graphic images.  Each card has been grouch tested which means my husband read them and laughed. No animals have been injured during the development on the entire collection of my cards as my products are tested entirely on mutant humans.   Finally, I am rewarded for my deep and sincere thoughts.

In need of a dance partner, I thought it was time to find a husband.  Having no luck with eBay, I went to a sale barn and traded for a guy with great athletic conformation, high spirit  and brains.  A simmering cowboy wedding ceremony with a herd of wild horse flies, drunken relatives and cowboy saddle pals to wish us the best is how it all began.  Heat exhaustion persuaded us to cool things down by celebrating our honeymoon in New Orleans.  Hurricane Katrina struck as we were deserted in our hotel room in the French Quarter -  I then realized the haltered one was lacking in ground manners.  Out of estrogen and with Walgreens boarded up for the storm - I decide that now is the time to bust out.  By the grace of God and forcing our will onto a walrus-size liquor salesman with a weak heart and bad breath, we were able to pile into his luxury SUV - while the streets were in disarray.  There were six of us:  Uncle Lou the sweaty liquor salesman was at the wheel,  a new guy named Joe suffering from a work disability, a Sharon Stone-look-a-like liberal, a Canadian lawyer DWI ticket fixer and us the knucklehead newlyweds aka, Perry Mason and The Rhinestone Cowgirl.  Uncle Louie doing 110 m.p.h. down the back roads to get to the Interstate while dodging alligators - at this point, I was focused on keeping myself balanced during all of this excitement, as the group voted that I should take the seat behind Uncle Louie - propped on top of an opened box of Southern Comfort.  This was an unbelievable adventure movie with no popcorn. 

Now, I will share this:  I thank my lucky stars that we made it out of a city that  faced horrible destruction from the tropical storm Katrina.  Every person that went through the terrible ordeal has a different story.  I am grateful for mine because my life is very different now - I know that I am one of the lucky ones.  

Thanks for stopping in and putting up with me...I'd love to hear from you,   Cindy K. Roberts