News: Stop the senseless horse-punching!

October 25, 2013Shara RutbergUncategorizedhorse punching, police horse1 Comment

Two men on opposite sides of the Atlantic made headlines this week for punching police horses. What's up with all the horse punching?

Top: metro.uk

First, 30-year-old Orlando resident Korey Jerelds “took a fighting stance,” “yelled expletives,” and then “balled his right fist and struck Mr. George,” a police horse helping with crowd control.

Later in the week, Barry Rogerson, a 45-year-old Brit, was sentenced for punching Bud, a West Yorkshire Police horse, in the head during a riot at a soccer match in April.

The horse-punching incident was caught on film:

[st3air]

Neither Mr. George, nor Bud, was hurt. But the fate of their attackers proves yet again, that the U.K. is inherently horsier than us here in the New World. Jerelds has already been released from the Orange County Jail, charged with a misdemeanor count of striking a police animal. Rogerson's been jailed for a year. And banned from attending soccer matches for six. (There was no mention whether he could attend horse shows.)

The cases led Slate to ponder “What sort of person would punch a police horse?”

A drunken person.

The website featured a man vs. horse roundup. Apparently, Florida is not a great place to be a on the force if you're a horse. Another Orlando man punched a police horse in the face in 2012. The year before, in two different cases, St. Petersburg residents were arrested for horse-punching, a woman for slapping a horse on the butt, and a man for other for hitting a horse's nose. A Gainesville-area student was arrested outside a club after allegedly elbowing a horse who he said was “in his face.”

U.S. horse punching is not limited to the Sunshine State, however. A few years back a Kansas man was busted after hitting a police horse with a 5-foot-long inflatable penis (a prop from a bachelorette party). And, a Houston woman hit a police horse after the officer asked her to pour out her “large cup of beer.”

It seems, as a nation, we've moved from cow tipping to horse punching.

C'mon people, can't we just hit one another?

There is, however, a product that may help keep horses safe from punchers: