OklahomaHorses Magazine March 2023

March / April 2023 • OklahomaHorses 13 The grandeur and beauty of the Express Clydesdales has always and still does amaze crowds as part of national parades and exhibition events. The Express Clydesdales have chauffeured British royalty in Canada. And they have been named the North American Clydesdale Champions. In 2015, the Express Clydesdales were named the National Six-Horse Hitch and Eight-Horse Hitch Champions at the World Clydesdale Show, which takes place every four years. In fact, the Express Clydesdales have won innumerable national championships. Express Clydesdales were champions, but in competitions, Percherons and Belgians tended to lasso the higher awards. Josh Minshull, now the general manager and leading trainer for Express horses, located a hitch of Percherons for sale in Canada. So Funk sold some of his Clydesdales to purchase the Percheron hitch, but he kept about 10 Clydesdales to use in parades. “We started showing Percherons about five years ago,” Funk says. “The Percherons are more agile. Clydesdales have a bigger foot, and consequently, they can’t pick up their feet as promptly as the Percherons do. So to compete at the highest level, you need the Percherons. Fortunately, I have a good manager in Josh, who knows horses and knows how to train them and is a real ambassador for the heavy-horse industry. It takes probably two or three years at least to train a team for competition.” The Express Percheron hitch competes against 240 hitches in North America, including at major shows in Indiana, Denver, Minnesota, Toronto, Florida, Kentucky, Idaho, and Wyoming. “Our teams are doing well,” Funk says. “We’ve been in the top three most of the time.” Working in Unison Minshull “treats Percherons like athletes,” Sauter says. “They have a weekly routine of exercises, and then his job is to put the right pairings together for the competitions so they will work in unison with the other horses in the hitch. And that process involves trying different horses with different mates. Josh has been very successful in the training and the matching of the horses to work in unison in the show ring. The training is 100 percent looking after the horses from feeding to shoeing, training to horse shows, and their character temperament. And Josh is one of the top three North American shoers. Josh has a great staff. And his wife, Laura, works alongside Josh. If you go see the horses at our barn, there are always flowers and everything kept neat and beautiful. It’s a showcase place, and Josh and Laura have been very instrumental in all that.” Sauter continues, “With Percherons, grooming is a big part of the shows. The A six-hitch team of Express Clydesdales pulls an Express wagon. Bob Funk offers a treat to an Express Clydesdale.