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Pioneer Days Draw In Fans Of Horse Pulling

Tribune photo by FRED BELLET

Belgian draft horses compete during the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village Farm Festival. Allen Hager of Nicholasville, Ky., holds the reins as his horses, Bob, 9, left, and Boy, 14, pull a load of 3,400 pounds

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com

Published: February 14, 2009

DADE CITY - The entertainment is decided low-tech this weekend at the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village, with quilters, sugar-cane grinders and mandolin pickers gathering to show their stuff.

The highlight of today's Farm Festival activities was a daylong series of horse pulls – think of a tractor pull with decidedly less horsepower.

One by one, more than a dozen pairs of draft horses – each of them weighing more than 2,000 pounds – were hitched to increasingly heavier weights and given the task of pulling the weights across 20 feet of bare earth.

The task proved too much for one horse, which panicked when an ill-fitting collar pressed too tightly on its throat. The horse fell down, dragging its teammate with it. When crew members from Carolina Connection freed their horse, it bolted across the pulling grounds and jumped a fence, causing a stir among audience members spread across the hillside above the contest.

The horse eventually was corralled by its owners. No one was hurt.

Lois Mulvany saw the whole thing from her perch above the event.

She travelled from southern Illinois to watch her son, David Cox, run his team of Belgian horses in pulling contests across Florida this month. She sat with her sister, Betty Whitehead of Lakeland, and other family members and looked like a die-hard fan as she tracked each team's progress on a specially designed grid.

"When he was a little boy, his dad pulled ponies," Mulvany said of her son, who has since graduated to significantly larger animals.

A truck driver by profession, Cox travels the Midwest much of the year showing what his horses can do. While his team didn't win in Dade City, they did manage to pull nearly 2 tons of weight.

After their performance in Dade City, Cox's horses will try again in Kissimmee on Sunday.

When they get back to Illinois in early March, the horses will return to their lives as well-treated, well-exercised but very large pets, Mulvany said.

"They get their vitamins just like we do," Mulvany said.

The Farm Festival continues from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The Pioneer Florida Museum and Village is on U.S. 301 just north of Dade City. Admission is $8 for adults.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com.

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