He calls himself the “frontier Dr. Phil,” and the title fits the 51-year-old professional rancher as rightly as his XXL denim jacket and the walrus mustache he appears to have lifted from Wilford Brimley.

Every Friday night on Country Music Television, Scottsdale resident Rocco Wachman stars as the gruff co-host of the network’s hot reality show, Cowboy U, where eight city-slickers vie for a $25,000 purse by surviving an intense three-week boot camp that runs each greenhorn through the ringer – not to mention the mud and manure – to be branded best all-around cowboy (or cowgirl).

With his to ugh, no-guff demeanor, Wachman does indeed radiate a certain quick-draw Phil McGraw style as the stern Westerner who slaps pampered urbanites into bronco-busting shape, and hits newbies with heady campfire aphorisms like “Everyone needs to forget what they were before they become something new.”

On this season’s opener, shot on a ranch in Colorado, Wachman even seemed part dusty Donald Trump, telling a vain Texas blonde named Farrah to either chuck her hairbrush or go home. With perfect Hollywood timing, the dirt-dodging princess bucked camp on the second day, her cowboy hat snatched shamefully off her long, extension-enhanced locks.

But Wachman’s not just another pretty TV face – that distinction goes to his co-host, the younger, trimmer Judd Leffew, who’s also a champion bull rider. “The producers were looking for somebody who was not camera-perfect – and they got me,” Wachman laughs. “So then they had to go get Judd to offset me.”

Wachman’s merely playing himself: a real working rancher who, for the past 18 years, has been operating his own Cowboy U just north of the McDowell Mountains, at the ranch owned by his good friend Lori Bridwell.

In fact, it was Wachman’s Arizona Cowboy College that inspired the producers of Cowboy U, which just kicked off its sixth season in January.

“They came looking for me,” Wachman says, noting that his unique no-frills cowboy school, where well-heeled tenderfoots learn the secret values of bull riding, calf roping and showering outdoors, had already attracted the attention of the Today Show and Good Morning America for its authentic anti-dude-ranch approach.

“And at first, I politely told them to leave, ‘cause I had no interest in doing it. Then they told me, ‘You’re crazy. We don’t want to do it with you!’”

After checking out 85 other ranches, Wachman says, the CMT crew finally came back to their original choice.

“I can’t say they liked my arrogance. Because I can’t be bought, and I won’t be swayed. But in the end, they decided that’s just the kind of guy they needed to host this show.”

Certainly success hasn’t gone to Wachman’s head. The modest ranch house he shares with Bridwell looks strikingly out of place amidst the million-dollar homes that have since gone up around it.

“The trucks have gotten nicer,” Wachman chuckles, pointing at the shiny rides in his dirt driveway. “But I’m still the same guy in the dusty pants and spurs that people used to glare at whenever I went into town to buy something at A.J.’s.

“Only now,” he adds, “I walk in the door, and people ask for my autograph. It’s very strange.”

A THRILL SEEKER’S FIND

Christine McLaws recalls her first lunches with the well-to-do women in the East Mesa neighborhood she and her husband settled into after selling their successful computer business a few years ago.

“They were into hobbies like scrapbooking, making quilts or serving on the school PTA,” says the 37-year-old stay-at-home mom, whose four kids now range in age from 10 to 16.

But McLaws, a natural thrill-seeker who had tried skydiving and other extreme sports in her 30s to fend off becoming a bored, desperate housewife, was looking for something wilder. Finally, last September, she signed up for Wachman’s Arizona Cowboy College – and the rush of riding and roping, she says, beat anything she felt leaping from the sky.

“Skydiving was definitely a huge thrill,” McLaws says. “But it was so momentary. The free-fall lasted maybe sixty seconds, and then you’re on the ground going, ‘Oh, wow.’

“But [the Cowboy College] provided a feeling of accomplishment more lasting than just that momentary thrill. I mean, I still have fears and inhibitions about getting on a horse, because they’re unpredictable. But that’s what makes the thrill lasting: you’re overcoming new fears and moving forward every time you get on.”

The self-professed “city girl” admits the rough accommodations and hard work demanded of the small group (Wachman tries to limit the entourage to between 6 and 8 people) was “no walk in the park.”

“The first night, we stayed in their bunkhouse, which is very . . . rustic,” McLaws says, generously describing the heating-and-A/C-free room between the horse and bull stables on Bridwell’s ranch where both the men and women sleep with minimal supplies.

“Then we spend three days out on another ranch where we’re herding cattle, cooking, cleaning, taking care of horses, doing work. And at the end of each day, you’re just sleeping on the ground. There are no tents, no nothing. One night it rained, and I tried jumping in one of the trucks for a while. But that’s about as comfortable as it got!”

One of the other two women on the trek bailed midway through the experience, McLaws says. “She knew we’d be roughing it, but she didn’t realize it’d be quite that rough.”

Still, Wachman says it’s often the gals who love the experience the most.

“I get change of address notices from the women who come through this college two weeks after they leave,” he says, admitting he’s also heard from a few jilted husbands peeved over their newly-empowered dixie chicks kicking them to the curb. “It’s like this weird sabbatical where they find strength they never knew they had, and then go home and clean house.”

For all its perceived macho-ness, Wachman says the cowboy life is actually better suited to the fairer sex, and adds he actually prefers hiring female ranch hands.

“Women have a physical disposition to ride better than men,” he says. “We’re top-heavy; if men fall off a horse, we land on our necks. Women land on their butts. Plus, they have a natural instinct with livestock that men need to learn. The smartest horse here has got the brain of a three-year-old child. If you go to a preschool, who do you see working with the three-year-olds? It’s the women.”

McLaws, who since taking the course has become a regular at the ranch, agrees that being a mom helps when it comes to understanding horses – and vice-versa.

“With both horses and kids, you’ve got to be patient, ready for anything and attentive,” she says. “Sometimes you’ve got to nudge ‘em to get them to do what you want. But you’ve also got to trust them.”

On an obstacle course at the Bridwell ranch, one of Rocco’s young female ranch hands takes a horse through its morning exercises while bopping her head to some tunes playing on her iPod.

“You know I hate those things on your ears,” Wachman hollers, pointing to the familiar white earbuds that have become a de rigueur accessory for most of her generation.

“For me, there’s no more relaxing sound than when a horse gets into a cantor,” he continues. “It’s a three-beat gait, and the horse takes one breath between each ba-da-bump. It’s mesmerizing.”

While Wachman’s not exactly a Mennonite when it comes to enjoying modern devices and contemporary comforts, he clearly feels our society has gone soft, and that every American could benefit from a few days stranded in the desert. He says he still tries to spend at least 90 days a year sleeping on the ground, and has been bold enough to call a senior executive vice president for McDonald’s a pansy for being 50 years old and never having spent a single night outdoors.

“The people we’re fighting can do it,” he says, noting that a few of his Cowboy College grads have been military-bound men interested in mastering horseback maneuvers before being sent to war.

“I get those who say, ‘Well, people don’t have to live like that anymore,’” Wachman says. “I say, ‘Uh, yeah. Most of the world lives like that. You go to Africa or the Middle East, people are living in tougher situations than we used to live in 130 years ago.’ People complain, ‘We don’t have to be as tough as Wyatt Earp or Doc Holiday anymore.’ But these people kinda are.”

Helping pampered executives and citified weenies discover their inner Earp is only part of what the training’s about, however. Wachman says learning how to deal with horses can also teach you more about managing people than Dale Carnegie.

“Horses are very perceptive,” he says, approaching a stall where a wild mare newly added to the stable begins nervously circling its quarters, unsure what to make of this morning’s visitor.

“They can tell from a quarter mile away whether you’re a predator or if you can be trusted. And that’s a skill all businessmen want when they enter a boardroom.”

Entering the stall, Wachman begins pacing along beside the wild animal, gently brushing the horse’s cheek with his own, quickly settling it down.

“All the answers for these guys, from business and personal development to team building, they find here, in methods that are over 100 years old,” he adds. “I get a kick out of that.”