Pasadena, CA (KELO AM) – A unique team of horses from Sioux Falls received some national attention on New Year’s Day as part of the 2015 Tournament of Roses parade.
Six Dakota Thunder Sires made the trip from Sioux Falls to Pasadena to enjoy their first taste of the national spotlight. The draft horses are more known for their success in the show ring, but Joe Biren says when the opportunity to take the horses to the parade arose, he and his team jumped on it. “Houston [Haugo, the owner of the horses] came to me and said ‘you know Joe I’ve always wanted to do the Rose Bowl parade,’ so I said if it’s something you have the opportunity to do I suppose we should try it.”
Biren said they began the process of entering the parade in the summer of 2014, first by a paper application. “We got through that, which apparently is pretty tough to get through,” he said from there it was a matter of marketing. “We had to submit a video application with clips of the horses from competitions, and we had to do a bio about the hitch. Basically, we really had to sell ourselves.”
This isn’t the only accomplishment for the horses; Biren says the team is a two time national champion shire six horse hitch at the Iowa State Fair. He called the crowed that lined the famed route along Colorado Boulevard the largest he’s ever seen, “We were trying to count everyone along the route, and we’re pretty sure there was more people watching that parade than in the whole state of South Dakota.”
Biren says the Shires would be a "distant cousin" of the famed Budweiser Clydesdales.