CALGARY—Animal Justice, Canada’s leading national animal law advocacy organization, is renewing its call for an end to chuckwagon racing after a horse was seriously injured during the event at the Calgary Stampede on July 11.
According to a Stampede official, a horse was seriously injured during the Rangeland Derby following a collision between two wagons during Heat 3 of the chuckwagon races. According to a witness, another horse was involved. The current well-being of that horse is unknown.
Chuckwagon races, known as the “half-mile of hell,” are a high-risk rodeo event where teams of horses pull wagons at high speeds. These races routinely lead to horse deaths, with animals dying at the Stampede nearly every year they are held. No amount of rule changes or safety measures can eliminate the deadly risks of this event—horses are pushed to their physical limits, packed tightly together at speed, and the consequences are often fatal.
This year, that pattern of preventable safety incidents is playing out under an impending weakened legal framework. When the Alberta government passed the Animal Protection Amendment Act this spring, it added a specific carve-out to the province’s animal cruelty laws for “chuckwagon racing and rodeo”—shielding the event from the kind of legal scrutiny Animal Justice and others have previously pursued by filing complaints with law enforcement.
The law, which will come into effect in the fall, also created a new offence for “frivolous or vexatious” complaints to authorities about animal welfare, a provision that could discourage the public from reporting exactly this kind of animal suffering.
Animal Justice believes the government’s decision to single out chuckwagon racing and rodeo for special protection is itself revealing. If these events were truly consistent with reasonable animal welfare standards, they would not need a special carve-out to protect the event from legal liability. This is a tacit admission that, absent the exception, chuckwagon racing may not have withstood legal scrutiny under the law as it previously stood.
With legal accountability soon to be foreclosed by design, Animal Justice says the only remaining option is to end chuckwagon racing altogether. This latest incident is further proof that this event cannot be made safe—it can only be stopped.
“This is exactly the kind of serious incident we warned would keep happening once Alberta carved chuckwagon racing out of its own animal protection law. The legislature didn’t write that exemption because these events are safe. It wrote that exemption because it knew they weren’t, and it chose to protect the rodeo industry instead of the safety of these horses. When the law itself is rewritten to keep an event out of court, that tells you everything about whether the event should still be running. It shouldn’t. It’s time for the Stampede to end chuckwagon racing for good,” said Alexandra Pester, Senior Staff Lawyer at Animal Justice, based in Calgary.
According to data compiled by the Vancouver Humane Society, over 100 animals have died at the Calgary Stampede since 1986. The Stampede’s deadliest year in the past decade was 2019, when six horses died in chuckwagon races alone. Despite repeated promises of reform after each death, horses continue to die in chuckwagon and other rodeo events, year after year. In 2024, three horses died in chuckwagon races, and a young steer had his neck snapped during a steer wrestling competition.
Public polling shows that 65% of Canadians and 54% of Albertans oppose rodeo events.
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