Hank the Cowdog, Trainer Hank Ack, and an Arabian Stallion Named *Zbrucz: The Brusally Ranch Connection

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History Project Essay

In 1982, a writer named John R. Erickson penned the first entry in his Hank the Cowdog series of children’s books, about a canine head of security at a ranch in Ochiltree County, Texas. As of this year, there are 73 Hank the Cowdog titles, as well as toys, games, t-shirts, and other merchandise. With sales of more than six million books, Hank’s popularity shows no sign of abating.

      To be honest, I had never heard of Hank the Cowdog until earlier this year, when I was helping my friend, dressage rider and painter Shelley Groom Trevor, with her forthcoming memoir, A Riding Life: Memories, Dreams, Art, and Love. One day, I was fact-checking the lives of various people she’d written about, including cutting-horse trainer Hank Ack, who worked with Arabian horses at Shelley’s grandfather’s Brusally Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the early 1970s. A Google search of Hank Ack’s name brought up something interesting, a 2007 article by Joshua Rabe in The Oklahoman:

Hank the Cowdog, the fictionalized “head of ranch security” dreamed up by Texas children's author John Erickson, is known to thousands of kids and their parents. Hank the cowdog, the real one that inspired Erickson's character, was known to few.

But he was no less beloved.

“I can still just see that dog,”  recalls Glen Kirkendall, best friend of Mark Mayo, the man who owned and trained the real Hank to be a real cowdog. “He would jump up and put his feet on your stomach. He'd wag his tail and stand there and have a conversation with you.” 

The tale begins about 1970 when Mayo, a horseman [and Arabian horse owner/breeder] who had inherited a 10,000-acre ranch outside nearby Mocane [in Oklahoma] with his brother, decided to try his hand with a working cattle dog. At a horse show, Mayo was entranced by two Australian shepherds that dazzled the crowd with their ballet of herding maneuvers. “The male was a three-legged dog, and he was an incredible cowdog,” said Mayo's daughter, Meredith Lemaster, 43, of Bartlesville. So impressed was Mayo, he got one of the three-legged dog's four-legged offspring… [and] Mayo named the dog after its sire's owner, Hank Ack.

A 1976 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph reported that “Ack trains Appaloosas, Arabians and Quarter horses for all events, but specializes in cutting horses and reining horses. He has trained and shown five national champion Arabian cutting horses, and the Kansas state champion Appaloosa cutting horse.”

Hank on Jameel Basklawi.

      I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Hank Ack, but many years after the fact, I learned that he’d been a crucial player in an event that made a big impression on me.
      Back in 1974, while I was attending my first Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show, I was fascinated by the Formal Combination class, in which the horses are first driven, then ridden. After the driving portion of the class, helpers in white coats enter the ring, remove harnesses and buggies, and outfit each horse with a cutback saddle and full bridle. During this intermission, a beautiful bay horse broke loose from his handlers before they could put on his bridle. With two sets of reins around his neck, and the headstall and bits near his feet, he went soaring around the show ring at a dead run, leather straps flapping, breaking, and goading him on—until some brave soul stepped over the ring’s low wall and caught him.
      For a moment, it appeared that the horse and his lovely young rider/driver were going to have to be excused from the class due to broken equipment. Just then, a long-legged cowboy came running back with a new bridle, hopped the wall, and went to help the young woman. Within minutes, the horse was saddled. With his petite blonde rider aboard, the bay stallion went right back to work and took third place in a large class. To this day, I don’t remember who won, but I’ll never forget that striking stallion doing laps around the arena.
      That was the first time I ever laid eyes on Shelley Groom (now Trevor) and *Zbrucz, the well-known son of Comet who’d been 1970 U.S. Reserve National Champion Park Horse and was a top sire for Brusally Ranch. And the quick-thinking man who dashed back to the barn for a bridle? That was Hank Ack. Shelley remembered Hank as a “tall, lanky blond-haired cowboy with a grin that creased his whole face.”

Shelley Groom Trevor and *Zbrucz in a (different) 

Formal Combination class at Scottsdale.

      A few years earlier, Hank had been a trainer at Brusally Ranch, where he’d taught Shelley how to cut cattle on another son of Comet named *Centaur. Hank and Shelley both did well with *Centaur at the 1970 Arabian Nationals in Oklahoma City; Hank was Top Five Open Cutting, and Shelley was Top Five Novice.

Shelley Groom Trevor and *Centaur, mentored by Hank Ack,

 at the 1970 U.S. Arabian Nationals in Oklahoma City.

     By 1974, Hank was working as a cutting-horse trainer for Arabian breeder Owen McEwen of Wichita, Kansas. No longer an employee of Ed Tweed, Hank had no obligation to help Shelley and *Zbrucz—but his actions kept her in the ribbons that day.
      As I continued my Google search into Hank Ack’s life, I found a post on Facebook that dated to 2006. Hank, then 64 years old, was at a cutting competition in Ardmore, Oklahoma. As his friend Rod Miller recalled, Hank had just finished a run that was “good enough to win a check.” Hank stepped off his horse to talk to friends, then collapsed and died. As Miller noted, “If Hank was going to script his passing, he could not have done it any better.”
      Hank the cowboy inspired Hank the Cowdog, helped a friend in a time of need, and died doing what he loved. I’d call that a life well lived.