An animal rights group urged Ogle County officials to shut down a rodeo event near Rochelle on Sunday as one of its members heads to trial for charges that accuse her of falsely reporting a shooting at one of those events in May 2025.

The Chicago-based group, SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness, says that a rodeo, Rancho La Esperanza, south of Rochelle, is violating Illinois’ animal protection laws, and has been urging Ogle County officials to shut it down. On Sunday, the group flew drones over the property for the 21st time, capturing footage that appears to show steers limping with apparent broken legs and severed tails after being used in steer-tailing events.

[ Northern Illinois counties struggle to regulate Mexican-style rodeos, steer-tailing events in their area ]

Steer tailing, or coleadero, is when a horseback rider chases a running steer, grabs its tail, and wraps the tail around the rider’s leg to slam the animal to the ground. It’s banned in Nebraska and in parts of California and Colorado. Illinois has animal cruelty laws, but none that specifically outlaw steer tailing.

These widely criticized events have popped up in several other northern Illinois counties in the past few years. SHARK provided officials in each county with footage of the events, which in some cases resulted in animal cruelty charges being filed against rodeo participants.

In Ogle County, however, a SHARK advocate is facing charges.

The group’s campaign director, Jodie Wiederkehr, 56, is charged with two counts of false reporting, a Class 4 felony, and one count of harassment by telephone, a misdemeanor. She pleaded not guilty in August 2025.

The charges stem from May 25, 2025, when prosecutors allege she repeatedly called 911 and told an Ogle County dispatcher that she saw someone get shot at 16989 Ritchie Road, the location of the rodeo, when she knew what she was telling the dispatcher was not true, court records show.

Wiederkehr’s attorneys have argued that context is important, and those calls were intended to report animal cruelty actively occurring on the property. In a court filing, they said five steers had their tails severed, and one had its leg broken at the rodeo that day, and witnesses didn’t see any veterinary care provided.

The trial is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., June 15, and last until June 17.

On Sunday, advocates repeatedly called Ogle County dispatchers to report what they believe to be animal cruelty actively occurring on the property, but the sheriff’s office refused to respond. Advocates told the sheriff’s office that three injured steers were left without veterinarian care after the day ended, but deputies still refused to respond, SHARK President Steve Hindi told Shaw Local.

“We take all those complaints seriously“ and have been in contact with the state attorney’s office, but ”we can’t really comment about any pending or open investigations," Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVickle told Shaw Local.

VanVickle said he didn’t know if there was an open investigation into Sunday’s event specifically, but “there are open investigations on the location in general.”

SHARK footage of the event appears to show steers get their tails severed and limping after being used in steer-tailing events. When the rodeo was over, several steers that were missing half their tails were loaded into a trailer, while three steers appeared to get left behind in another pen.

“Ogle County’s a pariah right now,” Hindi said.

Under the Illinois Humane Care for Animals Act, it’s illegal to “beat, cruelly treat, torment, starve, overwork or otherwise abuse any animal.”

The law also says that anybody with animals in their care must provide each animal with a sufficient amount of “good quality, wholesome food and water” and “veterinary care when needed to prevent suffering.”

For Sunday’s rodeo, organizers rented 40 steers from Meyer Livestock of Iowa, and SHARK captured footage of 397 single performances of steer-tailing events, Hindi said.

At sanctioned rodeos, animals are typically limited in the number of times they can participate in events within a single day to prevent exhaustion.

The things advocates are asking to be prosecuted “have been in the law for decades.”It’s not just steer-tailing, Hindi said. “Overwork is overwork.”

“We need Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVickle and State’s Attorney Mike Rock to do their jobs like the other counties. It’s just embarrassing,” Ellen Svehla of Elgin, who assisted SHARK in documenting the event Sunday, said.

In McHenry County, the sheriff’s office investigated SHARK’s footage of a Mexican-style rodeo that occurred in August 2025 at a Woodstock property. Five participants were charged in October that year with one count of animal cruelty, and those cases are still proceeding through court, court records show.

The charge against four of those participants alleges they violated the Humane Care Act by pulling a steer’s tail so hard that they tore the animal’s skin off its bone during a steer-tailing event, McHenry County court records show.

In Will County, officials said they believe action by the sheriff’s office in 2024 deterred rodeo activity in the area.

In May of that year, Will County sheriff’s Detective R.J. Austin hand-delivered a letter to the owner of Meyer Livestock, which was supplying animals to a Joliet rodeo, that said the Iowa company would be held responsible for every animal in its care crossing state lines.

The Illinois and federal departments of agriculture require animals to have specific health records when crossing state lines.

“[The company] was afraid of being in trouble with the USDA,” Austin said.

The rodeo near Rochelle continues to operate under a permit approved by a county board vote in 2012, Ogle County records show.

The permit is not subject to any routine review process and remains intact as long as an event takes place there at least twice a year, even if the property is sold. It can be revoked only by a board vote if permit conditions are proved to be violated, Ogle County Zoning Administrator Mark Miller previously told Shaw Local.

“This kind of information affects where people want to live,” Svehla said, adding that it makes her wonder what other laws aren’t being enforced in the county.

In a previous interview with Shaw Local, Ogle County State’s Attorney Mike Rock said that “the difficulty is there’s not a specific statute when it comes to steer-tailing.”

A bill that would ban steer-tailing in Illinois was introduced Jan. 13 by state Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet, but it has not yet been voted on.

Passing a bill like that “would obviously make law enforcement’s job a lot easier,” VanVickle said. “There’s obviously a need there if the legislature has proposed a bill.”

In March, state Sen. Li Arellano Jr., R-Dixon, told Shaw Local some of the reasons why he believes the bill isn’t moving forward.

“I would encourage people to reach out to their [state] representatives,” VanVickle said. It’s “going to come from the citizens to show their displeasure with the event there and have their legislators take the action that they need to, to prohibit it.”