A cowboy preacher from North Texas who set off in July to ride around the world to publicize horse abuse has ridden into a social media dust storm.
A vigilant Facebook posse of horse and long-distance-riding enthusiasts is dogging C.W. Cooper's every move after he lost two horses to injuries, including one that broke its leg on a cattle guard and had to be shot last month near Alamogordo, N.M., in the first 600 or so miles of his marathon ride.Mounted on his sixth donated horse, Cooper, a 53-year-old air-conditioning repairman and onetime country musician from Bluff Dale in Erath County, has doubled back into West Texas.He's also dumped the notion of trying to make it around the globe and dropped the horse-abuse angle.He now says he's simply in the saddle for God."I prayed about it, and the Good Lord said, 'Let's go to Texas and spend the winter there.' Apparently he has work for me to do in Texas," he said Friday.Cooper, who spoke from the trail by cellphone from somewhere around Seminole, said he plans to ride until the "Good Lord tells me to stop.""My whereabouts right now are unknown, brother," he said, hoping to elude the online tail that managed to have him checked out by the Gaines County Sheriff's Department on Thursday.More than 1,000 people in a Facebook group are tracking him on the "Stop the ride of Carl Wayne 'C.W.' Cooper" page.Since Oct. 5, they have been sniffing out his trail, discussing his horse troubles and questioning the shifting reasons for his ride, as well as his claim that he's an ordained minister of the Cowboy Church in Springtown."He just continues to prove that he is willing to risk the health and well-being of these horses to justify his own personal ambition," said Colleen Parmenter Hamer, a long-distance rider from Blair, Neb., who started the Facebook group.Cooper's digital trackers have also called him out on a whale of a whopper.While trying to gin up support for what he once proposed as a five-year ride around the globe, Cooper posted online that he had lost his wife to cancer.But his wife, who once managed his band, is very much alive. They're still married but "more than estranged," he admitted."I did that before I was ordained and I forgot about it. I didn't want people to know my business. If you say you're a widower, they tend to leave you alone."A bumpy trailCooper's ride has been rocky since he set off from Springtown on July 23.His first horse gave out on him just a few miles into the ride, said Hamer's aunt, Bambie Goodall of Bellevue, Pa., who was acting as Cooper's ride coordinator.Before the ride, Goodall was alarmed when Cooper e-mailed her a photo of the horse."It was underweight and too small for him," said Goodall, 70, who helped Hamer with logistics when she made a 1,067-mile ride around the perimeter of Nebraska in 110 days on one horse."That's when I brought Colleen into the loop. We tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen," Goodall said. "He was so horse-stupid, I did not want to be part of his life."Cooper said he fired Goodall for "sticking her nose in my business. So she and her niece started this site and started slamming me because I told them they were a bunch of cackling hens."He said he gave up on the next horse within hours because it was skittish. He rode the third horse for a month over nearly 300 miles before it developed back sores, which Cooper blamed on an ill-fitting saddle.Argyle veterinarian Ryan Cate, who treated the horse, would say only that he doesn't think it was abused.Cooper rode the fourth steed more than 300 miles before it "accidentally" stepped into a cattle guard near Alamogordo, N.M., on Sept. 23, he said.The White Sands Missile Range Fire Department responded to his 911 call, but the horse broke its leg when crews were readying their equipment, spokeswoman Monte Marlin said Friday.Cooper said a cowboy with a pistol came by and "I had to put her down. It just about killed me to do it."He then went to Albuquerque in the hope of getting another horse. His story was reported in the Albuquerque Journal on Oct. 4 with the headline "Two Horses Suffer Amid Abuse Awareness Effort."In the story, unnamed fire department representatives said the horse was injured when Cooper tried to "walk or lead" it across the cattle guard.The next day, Hamer created the Facebook group."We're trying to keep track of him, and it's helping," she said.Desolate countryBut it's not keeping Cooper from finding new rides.Tom Jones, a 68-year-old Hobbs, N.M., rancher whom Cooper met before the cattle guard incident, took him in for a week and found him another donated horse. Cooper headed east into Texas on Wednesday."The horse had some kidney problems. C.W. rode him to Seminole and he called and said something was wrong," Jones said.He loaned Cooper one of his own horses Thursday morning "to help him out so he can go on his way.""Those people dogging him don't know nothing about C.W. Cooper," he said. "Everybody wants to sit in judgment of everybody. He seems genuine to me. I'm a cowboy and a man of the soil. He's a little snotty for me, but I'm not going to sit in judgment of him."Butch Ragsdale of Seminole, who let Cooper camp on his property for two days, said it didn't take long for the Facebook trackers to start calling him.He said Cooper seems to know "a little bit about horses. He just didn't seem to know what the horse's limits were."'Beating up on me'If Ragsdale were riding across the barren expanse of West Texas, he would want a packhorse to carry supplies."There's a lot of desolate country out there with no water," he said.But Cooper said he's not quitting even if his critics are testing his resolve."I don't have many cheeks left to turn. They are all beating up on me. I'm not doing this ride for them. I'm doing it for myself. Believe me, I like riding but I don't like riding this much."The Good Lord hasn't told me where to go yet. I'm obeying him. This whole ride is based on faith. I've been a disobedient child my whole life and I'm not going to disobey him again."Steve Campbell, 817-390-7981Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
