Cops and their horses train for Mardi Gras madness

[JetsBuddy]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8f1dMsLPQoLc8-qXOVdirqwrlDAD96EKUMG1

[eyesontheground]

Oh this puts me in the mood to be in NoLa!!

The mounted patrol units are a great thing!

Cool article...thanks for sharing.

[sneederstb]

sounds like a typical day training my horse :lol: maybe I should send him down there to get some bombproofing done!!! No, those horses down there are fabulous, I went to Mardi Gras last year and was so impressed with them and their behavior

[Simbalism]

My mare went in her first parade in November. There was everything from banners to bands, motorcycles, balloons, even a tambourine being banged on by a child sitting on the curb. The group I rode with was between an ambulance and a bag pipe/drum band.Best free bombproofing clinic I ever attended. When I got back to the trailer, we had to walk past a small herd of llamas and alpacas, and right next to my trailer was a group with minis pulling small carts. My mare never looked at a thing. Debi

[Seven-up]

I walked a horse in a Mardi Gras parade once. It was the most hellish experience of my life. I smacked a child. On purpose. :o Other people think the story is funny. Me? Not so much.

All the horses were tranq-ed to the gills, and were used for rich fat white guys who were already way drunk and had never been on a horse before. My guy thought he was a cowboy, and was kicking the horse the whole time, even after I repeatedly told him he HAD to stop or he'd kill all 3 of us. I was literally leaning into the horse's shoulder with him prancing on top of me, snorting fire because this jackass was goosing him the whole time. Halfway thru the route, when the parade stopped for a minute, he got off and peed on someone's house. A couple minutes later, the cops caught up with us, yanked him off the horse, and told me to keep moving or they'd take me too. Well officer, you don't have to tell my happy ass twice! However, that left me alone at the back of the parade with the rest of the krewe half a mile ahead of me.

If you've never experienced a parade, just know that people like to throw things at horses. LIT cigarettes, beads, cups, I actually caught a beer bottle that would have otherwise caught my poor horse in the head. The kid tried to throw beads in the horse's face. I grabbed his wrist, yelled "NO!" loudly and then smacked him. I make no apologies for it. :lol: In fact, I hope he cried.

So I finally get to the end of the route, and they didn't tell us where to meet up with the trailer. So I'm wandering around the French Quarter with this poor horse who's eyes are bugging out of his head (it was his first parade too) and of course won't stand still long enough for me to just get on him...I finally see some horses up ahead, I run to catch up with them, and ask one of the regular guys if he was with Cascade Stables. He says yes, takes my horse from me, tells me to hold the horse, gets on, and TAKES OFF. I had to jog to keep up with him, after being drug 5 miles by a horse who blew about 3 gaskets during the whole debacle. They almost left me downtown, and I practically had to climb into the truck bed while the truck started rolling. You know how people in the movies have to jump into a moving car while the bad guys are shooting at them? That was me. Given the area I was in, there were probably gunshots but it was too loud to hear them. There were at least six of us crammed into the bed of the truck, trying to not get smashed by the gooseneck at every turn. Oh, yeah, and it was raining. And cold.

When we finally get back to the barn, they tell us they would not be paying us tonight, as promised, but would pay us when we came back the next day. And seeing that my rider got arrested, he wasn't there to give me a tip. As promised. The next day, I had a blister on the bottom of my foot so deep I could see my stomach. I was still unable to walk a full week later, and actually had to cancel a date because of it. (What an excuse that was!)

Just in case you're wondering, I didn't go back the next day. So yeah, f&%k a parade.

Want to know the best part? The name of the parade was Chaos.:lol:

[Foxtrot's]

Sorry, Seven-Up, it probably wasn't funny to you at the time, but in the re-telling it is amusing. What an experience! I hope you have an excuse for bopping the kid - like he was in the way when the ??? came by and you were just saving him.

[kb]

Oddly enough, I was in NOLA (well Metairie actually) in a parade yesterday (on a float not a horse). The suburban ones are very different than the ones in town - it was pretty enjoyable. The horses in this parade were not for krewe "royalty" - they were riding clubs, drill teams, etc. While we were waiting to start yesterday, one horse bucked his rider off. Other than that I was pretty amazed at the horses, the were walking down the street with people lined 8-10 deep on either side. The crowd noise was unbelievable. Their riders were throwing beads, and doubloons and from what I saw they were pretty good. Even at the point where the parade had taken a U-turn...so in addition to the crowd, the noise and the objects being thrown from their riders...there was a float right across the median and we were throwing beads and stuff. They were taking it all in stride.

All I could think was that my horse would have fainted in the first ten feet. Especially when he saw kids sitting on top of ladders, with grown ups standing behind them...and waving their arms and yelling. He would have "swooned" I am sure of it.

When I was growing up in New Orleans, I loved to watch the police horses....thought it was just to cool.

[Seven-up]

Sorry, Seven-Up, it probably wasn't funny to you at the time, but in the re-telling it is amusing. What an experience! I hope you have an excuse for bopping the kid - like he was in the way when the ??? came by and you were just saving him.

I never wanted to see another parade float again, but I do have to laugh at it now. How can you not? :lol:

And my excuse was he was going to throw objects at the horse. Maybe he thought it would be fun to hit an animal in the face with something. Maybe he thought it would be amusing to spook the horse. Whatever his brilliant reasoning was, I felt the need to prevent it from happening. This particular horse was already out of his mind at that point. Had he gotten loose from me, he would have no doubt seriously injured himself, and there's a good chance he would have injured several people before he got stopped. If by some miracle he didn't get hurt, I would think his brain would have been permanently fried. And remember, by the time I played whack-a-kid, I had already been pelted by a lot of things. Drunk people don't have the best aim, so some things hit the horse, some hit me. One of those lit cigarettes burned a hole in my shirt.

This kid, who was no more than ten, was on the front lines, so to speak, of a very rowdy parade in downtown N.O. at night. Adults get mugged, groped, beat up, you name it. He had no parental supervision, because not only did no one stop him from tossing things at horses, no one had any issue with me beaning him. That's a downright dangerous place for a kid to be, supervised or not. I've seen people trample their own grandmas to get the good beads.

So even though I still make no apologies for what I did, let's just say I was trying to save lives. :lol::winkgrin:

[birdsong]

Our group trained with that Unit for several years until the hurricane. The officers are great and those horses are amazing. They have Percheron stallions at Angola they breed to and get these very tall well built horses. They can clear a street in a heart beat by riding in formation.
When one of them gets antsy and starts to prance around amongst the revelers...you've never seen people move so fast.

If a horse is ever hit or abused in any way from the people in the crowd, they can be arrested for assault on an officer.

One of my unforgettable memories is riding through Bourbon St on my horse.

[kb]

On Saturday night, apparently there was an issue with one of the police horses at the Endymion parade... and the girl who was there and telling the story to us said the horse was jigging and doing little bucks and hopping. She said the crowd cleared out quick but the horse was "a little out of control." I had to laugh because my exact thought was the officer was probably making him do that to get people to behave!!

[texang73]

On Saturday night, apparently there was an issue with one of the police horses at the Endymion parade... and the girl who was there and telling the story to us said the horse was jigging and doing little bucks and hopping. She said the crowd cleared out quick but the horse was "a little out of control." I had to laugh because my exact thought was the officer was probably making him do that to get people to behave!!

The officer had his own "airs above the ground" thing going on! :lol: I mean, after all, that (subduing people) is the whole reason for airs in the first place! :D

[yaya]

I donated a horse of mine to the NOLA cops several years ago. He was a 17-year-old Saddlebred, and they kept him on the force 'til he was 21, then gave him back to me.

They retired him because they said he wouldn't stay in formation. He kept going down the street with his butt to the crowd. Now, to me, that would be the ultimate in crowd control!