 Candy Pratt attended her first gay rodeo in Texas after seeing a poster in a bar. I hadn't quite come out to my family yet, but it was a place where you could go and be openly gay, and it was just a place of safety at the time. She grew up competing, riding horses. Plus, in the gay rodeo, women could participate in the rough stock events usually reserved for men. She remembers hundreds of contestants and 10,000 fans in rodeos that would run until midnight.