When Dennis Brooks was born into a family of cowboys described as “hard, mean, drinking, Marlboro smoking while chewing Copenhagen, blue heeler at their heels, fist fighting tough, flat broke cowboys.” Dennis was bound to be one of them.
Before Dennis Brooks started first grade in Goshen County, he and his older brother had been asked by a neighbor to ride Shetland ponies and to keep them rode down. Challenge gladly accepted. This was when he started riding broncs.
Dennis’s family moved to the Guernsey area when he was roughly eight years old. The family participated in all the Fourth of July parades with many different teams and outriders. They were active in the Guernsey Rodeo wild horse contest and any horse race, sanctioned or not.
His dad always hired on as a ranch hand and wherever he hired on, that ranch was sure to have two boys as extra help. Dennis would be put to breaking colts and haying, usually with a team, sometimes of mules. When he was nine years old, a neighbor hired Dennis and his brother to halter break and start 2, 3 and 4-year-old colts putting 30 rides on them then switching them out for the next set. They did this willingly, being paid to do what they lived for was a whole new concept. Since Dennis was the youngest, he rode the snub horse because his brother believed this was safer. However, this meant he usually wound up at the bottom of the wreck.
Dennis did all of this while going to school and helping his dad. He and his brother also had to “watch the little boys” while his mom would take afternoon walks. Again, happily they would put the little boys on the roof of the barn to watch for their mom to come back and they would ride whatever was in the corral at the time: horses, calves, or milk cows. They rode a borrowed bull so often that when their uncle showed up and bet them that they could not ride him, they hopped on double and rode him around! They did get caught a few times when the little boys would get side tracked watching the rodeo in the corral and did not see their mom coming back. She would whip them and make them sit at the table until their dad got in. Their dad would usually laugh and tell her he wished she’d been a couple minutes later and whatever they were riding would have done the punishment.
Dennis worked odd jobs as he got older, usually in a hayfield and riding colts for someone. In 1969, he was drafted into the Marine Corps and went to Viet Nam, this only made him tougher and ornerier. When he got back in 1971, he got married and moved to Glendo, where he’s lived since. Here he worked for the Wild Cat Post and Pole, skidding logs with horses. One of his horses he’d taught to jump in and ride in the back of the pickup without a stock rack.
After having his kids and settling down a little, he went to work for Johnson’s Ranches, along the Platte River. He was part of all the ranching duties along with making some really great horses, using them for gathering, branding, and fencing. He started team roping while working for Johnsons as encouraged by his wife. He enjoyed this and went anytime he could, rarely missing an evening at the Millikin arena and later at the Sommers arena. This became a passion for Dennis and he made some great lifelong friends. Dennis roped at many of the All-Platte County ropings in the 1980s.
While at Johnsons he also started the next generation riding and roping. He spent many hours leading kids to the “apple tree” and back and roping a bucket. He enjoyed the horses and the kids.
In 1988, Dennis moved across the river and managed the Platte River Cattle Company, doing the same work as before. His wife tragically got cancer and died during this time and he became a single dad of two early teens. But he had a solution — work hard and rope every chance he had! He would load his kids and whatever extra kids he could gather and take two gooseneck trailers jammed full of horses and head to the Sommers arena. They spent many, many hours doing this kind of therapy.
Dennis started participating in local ranch rodeos in 1993 and the play night at the Platte County Fair, dragging or riding the hide and climbing a rope from the back of the saddle only to be picked up again if the horse allowed.
After the kids were raised, he put together his own cows and ran them mostly on leased grass. He continued breaking and strictly using horses for all his daily work, until 2020 when, while leaning forward to rope a sick yearling his mare spooked and he broke his pelvis. He recovered and got back on, only to hit the dirt again a couple years later.
Dennis never missed a branding in the spring, one year he made it to 23, and come fall he was at every weaning, all while keeping up with his own work. He was always willing to help with anything horseback at a moment’s notice, and he loved it. Especially if there was a level of risk to it: loading strays in the pasture, icy conditions, or a known runaway team.
It’s hard to say how many good horses Dennis has made, how many loops he has thrown, how many frozen hours in the saddle he has spent, how many cold hot dogs from the saddle bag he has eaten, or how many cups of coffee he’s drank. That kind of life cannot be taught – it’s lived one hard day at a time and Dennis has lived every one of them as a true Wyoming cowboy.