#Fun Friday: A Little Horse Powered Fun on a Snow Day
By: Brittany Bevis
Every week, for #FunFriday, we like to feature a funny video clip or photo that’s sure to tickle your funny bone and put a smile on your face just in time for the weekend.
The entire country has been plagued by an unusually long and cold season, and it’s not just our neighbors to the north who have been feeling the bite of Old Man Winter. Texas, of all places, saw record snowfall for this time of year. An overnight winter storm on March 4th and 5th resulted in as much as seven inches accumulating in Grapevine, six inches in North Dallas, and hundreds of flights being cancelled at DFW Airport.
What’s there to do in horse country when it’s frozen solid? Travis Brereton of Weatherford has the answer. One of his Facebook video clips was picked up by Fox 4 News last week, and, so far, it’s been viewed 3,125,073 times and shared 51,008 times.
The 11 second video features Brereton aboard his three-year-old Quarter Horse named “Si” providing a bit of horsepower for fellow cowboy/snowboarder Chase Richter as he “attempts” a jump.
Click here to watch the video.
Although the landing didn’t receive a solid score, we still give Brereton and Richter a 10 for creativity and style points. (It’s not every day you see a snowboarder wearing a cowboy hat!)
We spoke briefly with Brereton who is horseback once again today in Decatur rounding up cattle. As it turns out, the fun winter stunt wasn’t too out of character for this cowboy. “We’re always doing something wild and crazy,” he says.
“Actually, we’re all from northern country, Oregon and Utah, so we snowboard all the time, just not behind a horse! We jump whatever we can find,” he says. “That colt is a three-year-old with only 20 days training.”
Brereton operates Travis Brereton Performance Horses out of Weatherford, TX, where he specializes in colt starting, cattle roundup, and ranch horse training. Typically, skijoring isn’t on his list of training services, but the unprecedented snowfall called for a fun snow day activity. Skijoring is an actual sport with roots in Scandinavia dating back several hundreds of years ago. In fact, a Skijoring exhibition was held in Switzerland at the 2nd Olympic Winter Games in February 1928.
For those who think this activity sounds like fun, Brereton has only one piece of advice. “Get a broke horse!”
