Powell grad Chase Anderson’s job, alongside three other women, is to keep a pony and a yearling calm on a football field and, naturally, various other high profile events.

These aren’t just any equines, they’re Cowboy Joe V and Baby Joe (who will one day become Cowboy Joe VI.)

“A lot of it is kind of just spending time with him and making him familiar with us so that he knows that if he’s feeling nervous or panicked, he knows who’s around him, because with a lot of horses, some of them get very anxious when they’re around new horses or around new people,” Anderson said.

She added that she and the three other handlers help prepare him for games, they brush, bathe and braid the iconic pony and adorn him with his bows and UW themed blanket.

“It’s a lot of handling him and making sure he’s familiar with the people that are taking care of him,” she said. 

Anderson is in her first year as a Cowboy Joe handler — she applied for the position after seeing two slots open up on the roster, and unlike years ago being in the College of Agriculture was no longer the norm for Cowboy Joe handlers. When she arrived as a freshman, she and a friend jokingly considered adding an ag minor for the chance to work with Cowboy Joe to go along with her criminal justice major.

“Part of the reason I wanted to apply was because of always being around horses. Obviously, I can’t take my horses down to UW,” Anderson said, adding, “When I applied part of the reason that I wanted to do this is because I miss getting to be around horses and do things with them during the school year, because that’s  such a huge part of my life when I’m home, and that’s not a part of my life when I’m at school.”

Anderson has always had horses, she said — her maternal grandparents were veterinarians and her paternal grandparents were horse trainers — and her dad was a team roper who has also trained all their horses, so she’s frequently been around the rodeo scene or riding horses for leisure.

Anderson is also a big Cowboys fan, and as a junior at UW going to the games has been a large part of being a student at the school — win or lose it’s fun to have everyone backing the Cowboys, she said.

“I just always thought it would be super fun, and I had always watched the girls that did handle him and took him to the parades and had him in various things and it just seemed like such a cool opportunity,” Anderson said. “I think it’s really awesome, because  growing up in Wyoming I’m very connected to the culture of our state and the values and different things that are very evident at the University of Wyoming as well. Cowboy Joe … he’s not just our mascot, he’s more of a symbol of Wyoming, our heritage, and like how our state came to be and how the university came to be.”

The first Cowboy Joe was donated to the University in 1950 by the Farthing family out of Cheyenne, according to the pony’s official UW webpage. Cowboy Joe V is 13 years old and “is more than just a mascot at Cowboy and Cowgirl events — he loves to meet people and is very popular with the kids,” the webpage reads.

But he can also be a bit of a personality, Anderson said. She hasn’t handled him in a game time setting yet, that will come Sept. 6 in a game against Northern Iowa, but she did lend a hand during Cheyenne Frontier Days.

“I just haven’t had him in the game setting yet,” she said. “I’m very excited, I’m a little bit nervous because Cowboy Joe is very, very full of personality, and sometimes he can decide that he doesn’t want to do what he is supposed to do, and he can get kind of like, pushy or mean to us, because he just doesn’t want to be at the game anymore.”

The handlers will give him hay so that he doesn’t get “hangry” and the more experienced handlers advised Anderson to monitor his emotions and walk him around to keep him occupied so “he doesn’t get bored and want to leave.”

Watching Cowboy Joe run the field for the first time, Anderson would have never thought she’d one day be a handler, she said, “and now I am, and I’m just so excited, and I’m so grateful for that opportunity, and I think that it’s just really amazing to take advantage of things that you would have never thought would have been a potential thing for you.”