Despite all attempts to go lame, misbehave, and act stupid, my horse Broadway — dare I say it? — may be improving. The hint? We weren’t ‘The Worst’ at the recent Ellerbe Cow Clinic.

Not to say that Broadway was perfect — far from it. But he held his own with a more challenging herd. We had 26 multicolored real Sportcows to play with this year, not little timid yearlings like last time. Rented from a rodeo stock provider, these cows were bigger, older, stronger, faster, and sneakier than last year’s cows. At times, they found our plans for their relocation highly irritating. And many of them were more interested in their own two-legged sport than the simple herding drills we had in mind.

Initially, it was suggested to the group that anyone who lost a cow would have to buy a round of drinks that night at dinner. That plan was quickly abandoned.

I have to say that two days of herding cows at Woody and Greg Wilder’s 100 acres of heaven has done Broadway more good than a gazillion dressage lessons. On Monday after the clinic, we split a herd of deer in the woods and Broadway never even considered how fast an overweight amateur could fly through the air. The friend I was with did a classic ‘180’ while Broadway just stood and watched the deer. I’m sold on this cowboy stuff.

But I might need to sharpen my image just a bit. Real cowboys have cool hats, bandanas, silver belt buckles and, of course, cowboy boots. I’ve been eyeballing all the neat stuff at Ann and Dave Woodward’s Farrier Supply shop on U.S. 1. They even have snakeskin boots, evoking CSI-type images of bootmakers skinning snakes (do they just peel them like bananas?) I always thought boots were made of leather, but perhaps that would alert the Sportcows to the fact that cowboys have an alarming number of uses for slow bovines.

And if I’m going to cowboy in this crew, I’ll need to clean up my dialogue. There are some things you will NEVER hear a Southern cowboy say. Here are some examples:

1. Honey, I think we should sell the pickup and buy a family van.

2. Find us a rap or hip-hop station.

3. You can’t feed that to the dog.

4. Honey, did you mail that donation to PETA?

5. Baling twine won’t fix that.

6. I’ll have the radicchio salad and the tofu burger.

7. Darn! We have to choose between Gilmore Girls and the PBRA championships tonight.

8. No dogs in the back of the pickup, it’s just not safe.

9. Is this belt buckle too big?

10. I’ll take Ancient Chinese Philosophers for 1000, Alex.