My dad pulled horses. A pulling horse is a large, draft horse used for farming. The breed of horses we raised was Belgian or Percheron. Dad always had one or more teams of horses in the summer that he took to the pulling competitions all around the intermountain west (Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming). At the time, Dad belonged to the "Intermountain Horse Pullers Association". This association has been replaced by the Utah Horse Pullers Association.
The following picture comes from the Facebook page of the Utah Horse Pullers Association. It gives a picture of what horse pulling competitions look like. You can also learn what a pulling match is like by watching this video below from the 2013 Black and White Days pulling match in Richmond, Utah.
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| a team pulling a load SOURCE: Utah Horse Pullers Association Facebook Group |
To be prepared to compete in these pulling matches, the team needs regular workouts. This makes the horses strong. We called the activities we did to get the team ready to compete "working the team" or "working the horses". We had a number of different activities we did to work the team.
On the day that I invited Wendy to work the team with me, I planned to have the horses drag a weighted load around the 1/2 mile track we had in our field. Dad had a heavy drag that he hooked the cart to and we would drag it one or two miles around the track.
After Wendy arrived on the ranch, we went to the horse barn. I harnessed the horses and brought them out of the barn to check them together. After that, I hooked them to the cart.
Many years ago, Dad built a horse-drawn work cart. I do not have any pictures that I can find of the cart. However, the picture below that I found using a Google search will suffice to help you know what I mean. Our cart looked quite similar to this cart. However, Dad used an old school bus seat for our cart seat.
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| converted horse cart SOURCE: Way Out West Way Out West Blog |
Unfortunately, as I grabbed the seatback, the entire seat and cart structure tipped over backward and dumped Wendy off upside down and backward. The commotion caused the team to start running down the front side of the track. One of the lines got wrapped around Wendy's ankle. Thus, she was dragging along the ground, by her leg, behind the cart. I jumped and got a hold of the steel frame of the cart with my hands. As a result, I was dragging along the ground on my belly.
By now, the team was at a full gallop in run-away mode doing down the track. Wendy was screaming. I was hollering at the team to "Whoa!". I used one hand to reach back and untangle the lines from Wendy's ankle. After she fell free, I pulled myself onto the cart to untie the reins from the front of the cart and pulled the team to a stop. We were about 1/8 of a mile down the track.
I drove the team back to pick up Wendy. Fortunately, she was shaken but not hurt. We returned to the weights. I reassembled the cart and hooked the weights to the cart. Wendy got off the cart to watch as an observer while I got hooked up this time. Then we worked the team and returned to the house.
I never asked a girl on a date to work the horses with me again after that! In fact, the only other girl I dated after that was my wife Annette.
[April 15, 2020 Update] I found this picture of me with Dad and Jason from the summer of 2001 while I was working on a 30th Anniversary gift for Annette.
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| Summer 2001 `Jon holding Jason and Bryce Jasperson |
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