Riding Dog Face The Perfect Present Rob Sweeney Gives Wife The Only Gift She Wanted

Rob Sweeney didn’t promise to fulfill a seemingly impossible request as legend has it Babe Ruth once did for a dying youngster by hitting a home run.

Bull riding just ain’t that easy.

But as birthday presents go, the one Sweeney gave his wife was about as good as it gets.

Sweeney found out Tuesday he would be riding Dog Face in the Wrangler Prorodeo Classic at the Arena on Saturday, which happened to be his wife Desiree’s birthday.

“When we found out what I drew,” Sweeney said Sunday afternoon, “my wife said, ‘All I want for my birthday is for you to ride that bull.’ I said I would try to do that anyway.”

He did, scoring an 85, the highest-marked ride of any kind in the four years of the rodeo and when that score held up through Sunday, Sweeney earned a $1,261.19 check.

“She was pretty excited,” said Sweeney, who won this rodeo in 1994.

It was Desiree who convinced Sweeney to enter two years ago, and after he won, he planned to take a real run at being among the best bull riders in the country. He finished among the leaders in the Columbia River Circuit that year but last year his season was cut short by a groin injury.

This year he has high hopes again, heading to Fort Worth on Tuesday and Detroit on Friday. He’s traveling with Joseph, Ore., cowboy Kyle Kolbaba, who just won the Columbia River Circuit championship.

Scoring well on Dog Face seemed like a reasonable expectation since Sweeney scored an 89 on the same bull at Pasco on New Year’s Eve. He won $1,100 for that ride plus a bonus of $8,500 for winning a series that concluded that night.

“I was real excited when I knew I had him here,” Sweeney said. “I was excited all week.”

The Spokane rodeo does that to Sweeney, a Lake Chelan native who lives in Desiree’s hometown of Deer Park.

“I like this rodeo, I like competing in front of people I know,” he said. “The crowd plays a big part for me. In the middle of the ride, even though you’re not really conscious of it, you can really hear the crowd. That’s why I enter for Saturday. I knew that’s the best crowd.”

Sweeney fed off the crowd of 7,477 and in turn, he brought them to their feet.

Now it’s down the road, hitting his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association limit of 120 rodeos with a dream that next time he returns he’ll have more to his name than defending champion in Spokane.

“That’s my goal. As long as they keep drawing me good and I keep riding them, that’s my goal.”

, DataTimes