A year ago, Canada’s Jeremy Buhler won the Old West Futurity Heeling and a $100,000 check aboard SLR Swinging Hickory, a Hickory Holly Time mare from Stump Lake Ranch. He’s back in the same seat with the same script—only the mare has changed.

DT Hickorys Evita, a Hickory Holly Time mare wearing the DT Horses brand, sits high call for Buhler going into the Old West 6-&-Under Heeling finals on June 20, topping the Open progressive rounds with a 685.59—the highest composite score so far of the week and 6.76 ahead of Paul Eaves and Rubys Stylish Cat at second. Buhler is also third in the Open on his own Rw Shining Dreams 1, and Hickory Holly Time stamps the leaderboard up and down—DT Holly Time Ruby sits 11th—the same sire stamp that has carried the 2016 PRCA world champion to a remarkable run of heeling hardware.

That run is no accident. Buhler won the 2025 ARHFA Heeling World Championship on DT Hickorys Angus, took the Royal Crown 6-&-Under Heeling on Angus in Buckeye and stacked the Old West $100,000 on SLR Swinging Hickory (owned by Stump Lake Ranch) in between.

DT Hickorys Evita is small—”14.2,” Buhler said—and Tuftin kept her around longer than most precisely because of it.

“He told me the first day I seen her, he’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s a little small, but you know what? She deserves a chance,'” Buhler said. “She’s put together pretty good and she’s real fast-footed and she’s actually built really correct, just a little bit smaller.”

Tuftin had good reason to have a hunch that the mare needed a chance. It wasn’t guesswork, really, as the mare is bred to be exceptional. The 2021 black mare is by Hickory Holly Time, the DT Horses stallion whose foals have earned $5,135,098—a roll led by SLR Swinging Hickory, the winningest heeling futurity mare, and world champion DT Hickorys Angus. Hickory Holly Time is a son of One Time Pepto, the Peptoboonsmal stallion out of a Smart Little Lena mare, with the great Royal Blue Boon and Doc’s Hickory further back.

But it’s the dam side that elevate’s the game even more. Evita’s dam, Slynking Sugar Whiz, a 1998 Kings Zantanon mare, runs a different kind of blood underneath—foundation and running lines through Continental King, reining great Topsail Whiz and Sugar Bars, the bottom side that fits the fast-footed mare Buhler describes. She’s a proven producer in her own right: five of her 13 foals have earned, led by DT Elenor Shine Whiz, the J.D. Yates–shown mare who banked $44,798 with Superior titles in both heading and heeling and a third in the 2016 AQHA World SuperHorse, and Superior-heeling gelding DT Pecos Whiz.

“She’s a good little gritty mare. She just pins her ears and goes to the cow,” Buhler said. “Today what I liked about her is she literally got better every run. Every run, she’d pin her ears and just try her guts up. Wanted to do the best she could every time.”

Buhler credits the foundation under her to Tuftin’s program, which he describes in plain terms.

Buhler started showing Evita this season in Scottsdale and won eighth there at her first outing for $4,698. Winning the first two rounds in Heber City, she’s already added another $8,000 to her earnings.

“That was probably one of my bigger wins, like a personal win of the day—every horse I had was good in the box today,” Buhler said.

The prep since hasn’t looked like a typical futurity campaign. Tuftin sent Evita north with Buhler for roughly six weeks, through Oklahoma and into Canada, where Buhler rodeoed the Northern tour and worked his show horses in between.

“You go Saturday, Sunday to the rodeos and then Monday through Friday you ride the horses,” Buhler said. “If I didn’t like where I finished off on a Friday, I’d just load them up and take them to the rodeo with me and work them in the warmup pen there. … You can balance both up there.”

If there’s a question about a 14.2-hand mare taking the jerk of a steer, Buhler doesn’t see size as the answer.

“I think that comes 100% to confidence,” he said. “I’ve rode some horses that are 1,150, 1,200 pounds and they get pulled around on the end of it, but when they’re confident and their weight’s in the right spot on their hind end and you’re dallying at the right time when they’re in that spot, if they want to jerk the steer, they will.”

The finals run June 20 in Heber City, with Buhler one good short round from a second straight Old West heeling title.

Open Heeling Futurity Results on Three

Intermediate Heeling Results on Three

Limited Heeling Results on Three