Dayton’s Mad About Mules

DAYTON

- When you hear Bobbi and Barney Chambers talk about Sophie, Cleo, Denny, Lone Star and Superdude, you'd think they're talking about a circus family of seven that's not getting enough quality time together.

" We don't see them enough," Bobbi Jo Chambers says about her loved ones. "We're putting on too many of these shows."

But the couple from Cottonwood, Idaho, a town about two and a half hours from Dayton, is actually pining after more time with their show mules, some of which they've had for almost a decade.

It's unlikely the tan and chocolate mules penned at the Columbia County Fairgrounds will get to see much more of their 'parents' before the weekend, when they compete in the plethora of runoffs during Dayton's first Mule Mania gathering, scheduled for July 14-17.

After all, the couple is in charge of putting on the big regional event that's expected to be part competition, part cowboy nostalgia and part mule love fest.

Activities from Friday through Sunday will range from the must-see, must-eat chuck wagon cook-offs, to the parade, workshops and mulemanship races.

"One guy drove two days in his motor home, with his wagon and his mules for the chance to win a ribbon," Barney Chambers says to illustrate that the 150 registrants they're hoping to get for the big gathering are in it for the experience and camaraderie, if not their passion for what they believe is one of the smartest animal breeds on earth.

For coming all that way, "applause may be all you get," he said. "It's a labor of love."

Getting ready for what's expected to be the first of many Mule Mania events in Dayton has had its challenges. The planning started almost a year ago, when local mule circuit enthusiasts Doug and Margie Kreuger introduced the Chambers to Dayton city elders and won the town a big event that was previously held in Springdale and Coleville.

But now that it's show time, all the details for dozens

Mule Mania

July 15 - 17

Columbia County Fairgrounds

of different activities and for a projected crowd of hundreds of competitors and visitors need to come together in a new location and on a weekend in July that is best known locally for its annual alumni gathering.

All indications, however, are that Dayton and the Chambers have fully embraced each other and that the relationship will last.

"The community has really welcomed them," says Jim Cooper, a city councilman and executive with Columbia REA, which quickly decided to throw its corporate weight and funds behind the event thanks large part to CEO Les Teel, who is a mule owner and booster.

"If all goes well, you'll see a large influx of new people getting to know this community and the Touchet Valley," Cooper says. "We're hoping it will bring appreciation among young people for the way things were in their grandparents' and great grandparents' time."

For their part, the Chambers have already adopted Dayton as their second home.

"If I didn't own a ranch in Idaho, I'd live right here," says Barney Chambers, who has traded mules in almost every state of the union and in more than a dozen foreign countries. "People here want to make their community better."

From the very beginning, everyone from the chamber director to the county commissioners and business leaders jumped on the chance to help the Chambers host Mule Mania in Dayton even on the heels of All Wheels.

Now that it's time to stage the meet, volunteers are stepping up from everywhere. The Chambers' three-and-ahalf year-old son Jack was seen wandering off Monday with chamber assistant Amber Phinney and her kids to go to the swimming pool and leave his parents to work on the event.

So what got the Chambers hooked on this bemusing mix between horse and donkey?

" They're our heroes," Bobbi Chambers says, referring to her brood as well as the contributions mules have made throughout history.

Centuries ago, the king of Spain gave the first U.S. President, George Washington, his first mule, leading the founding father to decide quickly that the animal would be much better than its equine counterpart, the horse, to help develop the young nation as the premier beast of burden.

Nowadays, the biggest demand for mules is from outdoorsmen and outfitters. While modern cowboys have traded their horses for four wheelers, baby boomers are exploring their primordial hankering for the hills.

Bobbi Chambers grew up around mules in her hometown of Chewelah, north of Spokane. Her father, a logger in the nearby mountains of northern Idaho, would take his family elk hunting on mules when she was a teenager.

At first, she was much more interested in horses, taking her career as a young equitation rider all the way from local stables to Louisville,

Kentucky, at age 17. She needed a new challenge.

"I decided I'd been there, done that with horses, now let's do it all on a mule," she said. "I've never gone back since."

In many ways, it's far more difficult to get a performance out of mules than horses, the Chambers say. For one, trainers can't even begin to do any serious work with them until they are four or five years old. Horses can often start at age two.

"We pack them at three and start to ride them at four," Barney Chambers says.

But once they're trained, mules are far more versatile than horses, which are bred according to their specialties. The mules are able to pick up any of the 40 activities for which the Chambers teach classes.

"We ride some of the best horses around," he says. "But a mule will do anything in the world."

The Chambers and other mule enthusiasts say their animal of choice has a completely different psychology.

"They're not a push-button animal," Barney Chambers says. "A mule thinks its way through things. You train their minds."

As an example of their smarts, Chambers pointed to one of the show mules who just planted its foot in an empty metal feed bucket with a sharp inward lip on it. A horse would have panicked at sensing its limb somewhat entrapped and yanked it out against the inside rim, causing injury.

But the Chambers' mule moved its foot forward and slowly lifted it out of the low bucket.

"There are 18 mules in these pens," Barney Chambers says as he waves his hand around the fairgrounds pens where the first arrivals for the show are corralled. "Not one of them has a wire cut (from barbed wire fences that often scar horses)."

Barney Chambers, 66, a generation older than Bobbi, was born in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, attended Arizona State University and cowboyed as a ranch hand in his early years before getting into the mule trading business.

The couple first met at a mule show in Montana, where Bobbi Chambers hired him as a judge and started selling him mules. Sometime later, she called him when she was looking for work and he hired her to help on his Idaho ranch, where they have lived together ever since.

They were soon "blessed with Jack," a vivacious towhead who ran around the fairgrounds with the household's two corgis amidst the adult organizers earlier this week.

"I'm starting all over," says Barney Chambers, who has three grown daughters from a previous marriage.

Mule Mania

July 14 - 17 Free Admission

Tuesday - Wednesday Move in and set up for Contestants, Dealers, Chuck Wagons

Thursday