On Ranch Roping (and the Art of Looking Like an Idiot)
By Matt Dolkas,
Senior Manager, Marketing
August 20, 2026
Over the last few years I’ve been learning how to throw a lariat rope. Which is to say, that I’ve been actively looking like an idiot. From what I can tell, there really isn’t any other way to do it. Complete and utter humiliation is the only way in.
The whole idea is a bit outrageous. If someone were to explain it simply it’d go something like: Ok, you’re gonna take a bunch of hides from one animal (a saddle) and strap it to the back of a prey species that has evolved over millions of years to run away from literally everything (horse). You’ll then proceed to ride that animal while attempting (keyword) to throw a rope around yet another prey species that also likes to run away (the cow).
Remind me, why am I trying to do this?
I’ve seen the light. When livestock graze the right way, pushing plant material into the soil with each step, feeding the microbiome with all that dung and urine, the land comes back booming. It’s like it started going to the gym and found its fitness. It’s a vitality you can’t quite describe, only feel, and once you do, you’re never quite the same.
Livestock, when managed well, are a gift to the land. Fire fuels kept in check. Carbon settling into the soil instead of the air. Habitat held for the animals that need it. For a wannabe cowboy carrying some anxiety about our changing climate, tending to animals and land is a way to settle my nerves. A way to put my hands to work.
Of the seemingly thousands of loops thrown in a single night of practice (explained below), here are the few that—to my surprise—actually worked. The measure of success in ranch roping: gentleness.
Why Ranchers Rope
Roping on a ranch isn’t for show (especially when I do it). In a big pasture, a rancher sometimes needs to rope their animals to administer medicine, trim hooves (in my case, goats’ hooves), or whatever the job is. The alternative is often pushing the entire herd a long way to a set of corrals, which, depending on the situation, can be a lot more stressful. The rope offers a way to solve the problem quickly and gently, right where the animal stands.
This style of roping looks nothing like what you’d see at a rodeo, where contestants compete for speed and the movements are often quick and forceful. Roping on a ranch is the opposite. The goal is to keep the herd, and the animal being roped, as quiet and comfortable as possible. A soft hand, a quick treatment, the best possible stewardship.
Of course, my roping still looks nothing of the sort. For the first year I unknowingly swung the rope upside down while practicing. I didn’t even realize how bad it was until a long-time Novato cowgirl taught me otherwise with a held-back smile and simple “it’s upside down”.
Novato local Meg Sweeney helping gather cows from Mount Burdell with her horse, Cruise.
A Brief History of Roping
Every Wednesday night through the summer months I get to embarrass myself at the Novato Horseman roping nights just east of town. The group borrows cows from Grossi Family Farm to hone their skills and just have a good time. It’s become like going to church for me in a way. The kind of thing you go to even when you sometimes don’t feel like it, because, well—it’s Wednesday night.
We rope with breakaway hondas, a little plastic loop at the end of the rope that pops open the second a cow pulls tight. We’re not inventing anything out there, just borrowing it—badly in my case—from people who worked it all out a long time ago. And a lot of it was refined right here in California.
The original Spanish ropes were made of rawhide. Cut in long strips and braided for weeks by hand. They’re called riatas and, for the purists in the roping world, are still the finest tool of the trade. Like a good rope, the braids of this western history are pulled tight enough that things start to blend. La reata, “the rope” in Spanish. Say it poorly enough in English and “the lariat” finds its name. Same with “vaquero” to “buckaroo,” or “chaparreras” to plain ol’ “chaps.”
With the Spanish missions came vast herds of longhorn cattle, more than the padres could manage alone. Indigenous men were forced into the work, and became so good at it that the missions ignored a Spanish ban on Native men riding horses. Visitors said nobody in the world could sit a horse better. Some used the skill to leave, rode into the Central Valley, taught others, and came back for the mission herds.
The strand they added to the braid is the one everything else is wrapped around.
Generations later, the conditions aligned on the Californio ranchos to accelerate the evolution of the craft, to take roping and good horsemanship from a practical skill to a high art. The expanse of land and time, for at least the privileged few, allowed for the refinement of a single horse, for the perfection of a single throw. It then moved the only way a craft like this can move: from hand to hand, ranch to ranch, slowly seeping deep into the culture of California—an art endemic to this place.
Teresa Tivio, a broodmare kept by Arnold Dolcini at the now MALT-protected Red Hill Ranch, produced some of the most influential cow horses in American history. Three generations later, the Dolcinis are still ranching here.
Still Learning
There might be something wrong with me. I wonder sometimes if it’s normal to be comfortable accepting this level of embarrassment on a regular basis and still enjoy myself. But if I’ve learned anything in the process of learning to rope, it’s that it’s ok, you don’t have to be any good. And once you’ve got that, you’re free to try just about anything.
What I didn’t expect was how much of it isn’t about the rope at all. It’s reading a cow before she moves. It’s the timing and feel of the horse and herd. Knowing when to hold still, take a breath. Most of what little I’ve got I learned from Kevin, my mom’s horse, who had it all figured out long before I did. The rope is just the part you can see. Everything underneath it takes time, takes feel—but you have to start somewhere.
The simple truth is grass here needs grazing, and grazing needs people who know how to do it well. The participation in this ranching community, for all of us, is the important part. Somebody has to keep showing up, keep asking to be taught, keep buying local, keep the strand from going slack.
Even if all you’re contributing at first is, quite simply, just comic relief.
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