story by Ruth Nicolaus
Sean Arellano loves riding bulls. When he started his Colorado Junior High School Rodeo Association competition a year ago, he said, “I tried it and fell in love with it.”
The Jefferson, Colo. cowboy, who is thirteen years old, had been wanting to ride bulls for a long time, and now he’s competing. “I like it a lot,” he said. “It’s going really good.”
When he was little, he watched the movie “Eight Seconds,” a “bajillion times,” said his mom, Annie. He was determined to get involved in riding bulls, she said. The first bull he got on, he got bucked off, but the first words out of his mouth was, “I’m hooked.”
“I think he likes the adrenaline,” Annie said, “and the competition. (Riding bulls) is not always a guarantee. It’s something you have to earn. You’re not handed a trophy and I think he appreciates that.”
He hasn’t made a qualified ride – yet – but he’s close. On one of his practice bulls, a red brahma, he nearly gets it done. “Every time he gets me,” Sean said, “with a little turn to the right. Next time I ride him I’m going to get him.”
An eighth grade student at South Park Middle School, he likes school a lot, especially his friends and the teachers. Social studies and science are his favorite classes. He especially enjoys studying American history from the 1700s and 1800s.
Sean’s favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, “because I’m here with my family, eating dinner with all of them.” Nana’s stuffing and the green chili on the table help, too. After eating, the family hangs out, ropes, and plays basketball.
The most fun he’s had on a trip was to Maui in 2022. They hiked, went whale watching, went to the black sand beach, and swam in the ocean.
If Sean had $1 million to spend, he’d buy his family a new house, “somewhere where it’s nice out, like Florida,” fix up the ranch, and buy himself a truck, a white or gray Dodge 2500.
He loves to hunt with his dad, move cows, rope and help his dad out around the ranch. He does chores each morning and evening: feeding chickens, bulls, calves, ducks, his sisters’ goats, and the dogs.
The family has four dogs (Hoss, Roper, Jessie and Boyo) and two indoor cats. Sean has two guinea pigs: Diego and Cocoa, both females. He had a third guinea pig, a male, but it died.
When Sean grows up, he’d like to be a PBR and PRCA bull rider, an architect and a taxidermist. His parents, Annie and dad Gerad, have told their boy that he needs a backup skill, in case the bull riding doesn’t pan out. “He loves the beauty in what he can build,” Annie said. “He wants to do something where he can create something from his own imagination.”
As the only boy in a family with four older sisters: Stevi, 21, Gracie, 18, Sadie, 16, and Charli, 15, they loved on him when he was a baby. “They spoiled the heck out of him when he was little,” his mom said. “He had them wrapped around his little finger. Now they torture him and give him a heck of a time. But they adore him.”
The family ranches in Park County, about sixty miles west of Denver, in a very rural area.
Sean has been interested in ranching since he was old enough to be put in the carrier as his mom fed cows in the winter.
“I just enjoy that he loves ranching,” Gerad said. “He’s always by my side, everywhere I go, and he wants to get in there and help. He’s always willing to get his hands dirty and get the job done.”
Sean and his sisters are the fifth generation on the ranch, which was begun in the 1920s by Annie’s great-great aunt and her husband.
Sean is responsible, his dad says.
When Gerad works as a fireman and is gone for two days at a time, he tells Sean that “he’s the man of the house. He makes sure there’s wood in, and he gets the job done.”
