VANSCOY, Sask. – Tim Edwards turns a few heads while making a spectacle of himself.
Whether standing atop two galloping horses or riding a 1,000 pound Texas Longhorn steer down a grid road ditch, Edwards is easily noticed near his acreage outside Vanscoy.
Such spectacular stunts are his business. He and his wife Jackie annually take their trained animals to rodeos across Western Canada.
Training steers started with teaching a Longhorn named TJ a few tricks and evolved into stints in movies, promotional work and a fully booked summer rodeo schedule.
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TJ can kneel, balance all legs on a narrow pedestal, crawl and jump. He can wrap a leg around Tim or gingerly walk over a fully reclined Jackie before climbing into a truck at the close of each show.
Like the Edwards’ amiable Shih-Tszu, TJ responds to Tim’s directions.
“He comes and stays on command,” he said.
The Edwards have also trained Texas Tornado, a 2,600 lb. Brahma steer, to pose for commercial photo shoots, often in china shops, and walk in parades.
“He’s a big old puppy dog,” Tim said.
He said the pair travel better than horses, have calmer dispositions and are able to relax quickly when travelling.
His buffalo Apache, by contrast, proved much tougher to train.
“He is full of himself,” he said of the animal seen in a Manitoba telephone advertising campaign.
The Edwards’ act also included Roman riding, , where Tim rode on the backs of two horses through a ring of fire and past a motionless Jackie. The act stopped two years ago at the stampede in Olds, Alta., when Tim broke his back in a fall off the horses.
That was the most serious of a number of scrapes, bruises and broken bones in his rodeo years. Jackie has fared only slightly better, having been spun around and stomped on by the animals.
Tim has also trained another steer called Red for the movies and a donkey for a Christmas nativity scene.
He keeps the specifics of his training methods secret, but they involve quiet gesturing and calming words to encourage behaviours without food rewards.
“You can’t have them working scared,” he said. “Animals working too much on edge or working scared can’t be trusted.”
Tim grew up around animals on a farm near Mather, Man., and is a veteran of chuck wagons and rodeos, while Jackie was raised on an acreage near the city. The pair met at a rodeo dance.
“I surprise myself with some of the things I’ve done,” Jackie said.
“Tim is such a risk taker and I’m so cautious.”
They take precautions with the animals by controlling people’s access and watching where the animals’ feet are at all times. And they respect the animals’ personalities, noting the gentle Brahma relishes the attention.
In addition to the rodeo act, Tim keeps and trains about 10 horses at a time in Arizona each January, some destined for roping and riding markets. Some are used for his hobby of team roping or Jackie’s barrel racing.
He returns to Canada to train in March and April and tours from May to September. In between, he supplies animals and does stunts in the movie industry.
With a full movie card, Tim can command top dollar for his work. A single stunt can yield as much as $1,500, he said.
“If movies didn’t pay, I wouldn’t be there.”
The 2005 rodeo season is expected to be the Edwards’ last one because Tim and his steers are getting older.
Jackie has enjoyed the people they’ve met and places they visited but said it’s time to slow the pace.
“I think we’ve done our time on the road, it was good,” said Jackie, who works full time in fundraising for a long-term care centre in Saskatoon.
Tim plans to use the extra time to continue training horses and watch his steers enjoy their retirement.
“The animals served us well and deserve to be well kept in their golden years,” he said.
Looking back, Tim has no regrets about his long and varied career with animals.
“A person is pretty lucky to do the job they want to do and be a cowboy.”
