Weatherford trainer dotes on his tiny star

FORT WORTH -- The agent for America's best-loved rodeo cowboy sat inside his 40-foot motor home, a cellphone pressed to his ear.

"Hello, Brad?"

Brad Barnes is the Fort Worth Stock Show's general manager.

"This is Tommy Lucia."

Lucia told Barnes that he desperately needed credentials that would allow him to park next to Will Rogers Coliseum during the rodeo.

"I gotta get my monkey to the dressing room," he said.

The weather was turning freezing cold.

"I don't want him to get sick."

They say there's no business like show business, but traveling the country with a celebrity primate, two border collies and a flock of wild Barbados sheep creates challenges and worries unique even to the entertainment industry.

Whiplash is the tiny capuchin monkey who wears a Western hat and chaps and herds sheep while saddled atop a dog.

Lucia's border collies (Ben and Toby) are talented in their own right, but the monkey is the headliner -- the star.

Being protective

Watching Whiplash ride full tilt around the arena, jerking his saddle to the left and right, hanging precariously off the side of his canine steed like a trick rider ("that's been drinking too much," Lucia added), is a spectacle one doesn't see every day, even in Texas.

Prince Rainier of Monaco saw him and loved him. Whiplash has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America and ESPN SportsCenter, and is featured in Taco John's commercials.

His Web site ( www.whiplashrides.com) receives an average 1,000 hits daily.

Whip, as Lucia calls him, weighs only 7 pounds, but he's athletic and strong-willed. He's also temperamental and rambunctious and possesses an infantile inquisitiveness, which is one reason why his agent/trainer/guardian keeps him in a kennel cage when the little guy isn't delighting audiences with his antics.

What if he turned Whiplash loose inside the motor home?

Lucia soberly surveyed the cabin, his eyes roaming from the steering wheel to a couch to the kitchenette and bathroom.

"No telling," he said. "Probably stick his finger in a socket."

So Lucia is watchful, very protective, and not just because Whiplash is his meal ticket.

The 66-year-old Weatherford man, recognized as one of America's leading animal trainers, feels a close kinship with Whip.

"I'm his dad," Lucia said, which, theoretically, would make his brother a monkey's uncle.

Primate partnership

Man and monkey teamed up after Lucia read a classified ad in a Miami area shopper and bought the baby monkey from a widow.

Now Whiplash is middle-aged, almost 21. Although he's old enough to vote in the presidential primaries, his owner compares the critter's level of mental development with that of a 2-year-old child.

Whiplash watches the Cartoon Network. He enjoys Walt Disney movies, like Brother Bear and Peter Pan. He plays with toys. He sleeps under a wool blanket.

He chirps and chatters and sometimes scratches his cage, demanding attention.

"He's got feelings," Lucia said. "That's why he's so popular. He expresses himself when he's riding."

Lucia, a former rodeo clown, claims that he didn't "train" the monkey to ride a dog.

"It was more of a negotiation," he said. "He taught himself, if anything. Riding must be born in his blood. There's not a dog that could stop and turn fast enough to throw him off."

Lucia began working with Whiplash when the monkey was very small, bottle-feeding him, bonding, slowly earning the animal's trust.

It took eight months for the monkey to become comfortable balancing on a saddle. Later the trainer gradually introduced him to his dogs.

Over time the border collies grew accustomed to carrying a monkey as a passenger.

"You've got to have a dog that can handle that mentally," Lucia said. "When Whip comes into the arena, people start roaring."

He and his son Anthony take their act to rodeos and special events, traveling in a black-and-gray motor home, pulling a 23-foot trailer.

Whiplash appeared in Phoenix before making his return to Fort Worth, where the 30-performance rodeo runs through Feb. 3.

"We make a living," Lucia said, "but I've turned down good-paying jobs because I wasn't comfortable with the atmosphere."

Every job has its drawbacks. There are times when Whiplash tests his handler's patience.

Lucia can't count the times he has dressed him, slipping on his red costume shirt, adjusting the tiny hat that matches his own.

'A mind of his own'

The travel can get tiresome, and there is a monotony to the routine, but their life together hasn't grown old -- at least not for Lucia.

Whiplash still makes him laugh out loud because he is so unpredictable.

"Why does he do this, or do that?" Lucia said. "I tell people 'Don't ask me. I don't know.' He's not a robot. He's got a mind of his own."

When Lucia took his act to the Calgary Stampede rodeo, he wasn't permitted to transport his flock of sheep across the Canadian border. (He needed five international permits just to take Whiplash into the country.)

So the rodeo provided the stock for his act.

"They were big sheep, I mean huge," Lucia recalled. "Big as a Shetland pony."

Lucia had worked his dogs with these mammoth sheep, but Whiplash had never seen them ... until that night when he triumphantly entered the arena as he always does, sitting tall in the saddle, wearing his Resistol hat and Justin chaps, his oil-dot eyes shining.

The monkey looked at the flock and blinked.

Immediately he turned his tiny face and peered quizzically at Lucia.

In a comic double-take, he took a second glance at the animals -- and turned again to his surrogate father who had booked this gig.

If ever a human knew what a monkey was thinking, it was at that instant.

Lucia still can picture his priceless expression.

"It was like, 'What's going on?'" he recalled, giving voice to his star.

"'We're supposed to be working sheep, not elephants ...

"'What the heck are these?!'"