Cowboy enjoys stay in Bluff City

Joe Guy and his mare, “Ugly Betty” arrived in Eufaula Monday.

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Published: June 17, 2009

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A singing cowboy comes riding into town on a horse named “Ugly Betty”.

No, this isn't a scene from a Clint Eastwood movie. This is Eufaula and the cowboy is named Joe Guy - but his nine-year-old Tennessee walking horse is really named “Ugly Betty”.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Joe is “Living a Dream”. In fact, that's the title of his new book. This rugged Aussie is a modern-day cowboy, sleeping under the stars at night with his saddle as a pillow and camping out by local streams and ponds, or “dams”, as he calls them.

He rode into the Bluff City all the way from Nashville, Tenn. - a 500-mile trek. That might seem like a long way to anyone else, but Joe has ridden 7,000 miles through the harsh Australian outback.

“I'm amazed at how pretty it (Eufaula) is,” he said. “There is green grass everywhere. Australia is such a dry country. (Growing up) my stepfather handed the keys to his ranch back to the bank after seven years without a drop of rain. When he went to round up the sheep to put them back in the trailer, he didn't even have to chase them - they were too weak to run away.”

Joe ran away from home when he was only 12 years old. When he was 19, he rode into the Australian outback in search of adventure.

“I taught myself to sing and play the guitar … (And) I found I had a knack for breaking problem horses,” he explained.

The cowboy specializes in training “problem horses”, horses whose owners have given up as unbreakable.

Read more on this story in the weekend edition of The Tribune avaliable Friday, June 19.