The announcer in the arena at WestWorld in Scottsdale, Ariz., gave the crowd at the Western States Draft Horse Carousel Charity Horse Show Big 6 Classic the lowdown on the champions while they trotted around the arena in a victory lap.
“All the way from Prince George, B.C., it’s the ZD Pickering Family Farms Percherons, big black horses, that’s how they should look when they go by ya,” said the man.
“One horse, one team, they’re all together there. That’s a big powerful group of Percherons there with three-time world champion driver Tim Sparrow on the lines.”
Back in Prince George, Zane Pickering was like a proud papa passing out cigars, watching on YouTube while his prized team of horses strutted around that Arizona arena — the only Canadian team entered.
That team of six husky hooved Canucks won all three days of the competition in the Big 6 Classic event and despite all the turmoil stirred up lately by the American president and his tariffs, politics never once tainted the weekend for the Pickering team.
“We were the only Canadians there, they actually flew the Canadian flag for us and sang the Canadian national anthem, which was really cool,” said Pickering. “We gave Trump a bad time and let him know that we’re there regardless of how he wants to the think that we’re nobody. We’re somebody.
“But you don’t get that feel from the American people. As a matter of fact, they’re pretty embarrassed of the way he’s going about things, being condescending. The years that I’ve been going down there, I’ve been showing for 12 or 13 years, the American people have all been good, you never hear a bad word about Canadians and vice-versa, everyone gets along well.”
Six-horse hitch teams are judged on the size and physical condition of the horses, their overall health and muscle tone, grooming and attire, their movements and how well they work together as a team, as well as the driver’s skill. They have to change from a walk to trot with their feet moving in unison as they parade around the dirt infield and they earn points based on how they respond to the driver’s instructions to keep moving in sync as they tug with the wagon, both forwards and backwards.
“We just started the hitch, that was their first outing, and they’re going to stay down there now for a while because we have a couple other shows to go to,” said Pickering.
“They’ll be back in Calgary, Vermillion and Lloydminster in July and we’ll do our Canadian shows. The Prince George (Northern BC) Exhibition is thinking about bringing them up as an exhibition but they typically don’t run Big 6’s here at these small fairs.”
Pickering’s interest in entering draft horses in big horse shows like the Western States Draft Horse Classic and Calgary Stampede is keeping alive a family tradition that dates back generations when horse logging was a common practice in the Central Interior. He also enters pulling events using Belgians where the horses are teamed to try to pull heavy weights on sledges. In the days before heavy mechanical construction equipment, that’s how roads and railways were built.
“The Pickering family were pioneers of Prince George and they were in the sawmill business and horse-logged,” he said. “I used to listen to my grandfather my dad and uncles talk about horse-logging and draft horses and of course, since automation, they’ve been put back. It’s just something I wanted to get into.
“In my youngest life I was too busy and never did and I wasn’t set up for it, but as I got older I geared up and eventually got involved in it. I just have fun with it, trying to live out what our folks did. When they talk about their prized horses, their best pulling horses for horse-logging, I can see how they got excited about it, running them ourselves in competitions.”
Pickering said he still does some horse-logging for putting in fire guards in areas where it’s not feasible to bring in heavy machines.
Zane was a bit under the weather and the owner of Falcon Contracting couldn’t make the long trip to Scottsdale, but his wife Diana and daughter Saynia were there to groom and decorate the horses and get them ready for the show.
Sparrow is from Utah. Pickering says it takes a team of six horse handlers to look after his horses and the Pickering team is from various locations in the U.S. and Canada.
