In general, in today’s automobile-dominated cities, may the average citizen buy and maintain a horse and ride it around town in the course of daily life? Are stables allowed among the garages on regular streets? Must the rider clean up the horse’s droppings?
I’m aware of the mounted police that Toronto has, for instance, but they have their own training, stabling, and maintenance facility in, I believe, Sunnybrook Park. I’m thinking smaller: one person, one horse.
Do horses need slow-moving vehicle signs? Turn signals? Headlights?
There is a corral with a couple of horses 4 blocks from my house and while riding bike on Sunday I saw a couple of people riding through a residential neighborhood. All of this is, “in town.” not in a suburb.
The corral is grandfathered in, a realtor told me, but only for the current owner. I don’t think you can keep a horse inside of city limits on a regular basis. There is no law against riding around town and I suppose you would get a ticket for not cleaning up after it only if a cop was in a bad mood.
About 15 years ago a cowboy spent a night getting drunk in Billings, Montana (population 100,000), riding around on a mule and tying it off to parking meters. No tickets were issued.
What a great question! A cursory review of the Cleveland Codified Ordinances reveals no law as to horseback riding on city streets. Stabling wouldn’t be a problem, I expect, unless you fail to keep it clean, as you might be charged with a nuisance violation if the neighbors complain. Likewise, uncleaned-up horse poop on the streets might catch you a littering charge.
I’d tentatively answer “no” to all of your final three questions, at least in Ohio. You’d still be bound by the broader state law as to cruelty to animals, road safety, etc.
FTR, the stables attached to both Prospect Park and Forest park in NYC have the stable right in among high-density residential homes. Actually to get from the stable into Prospect Park you have to cross a very busy traffic circle. The situation was the same at Claremont Stable (Central Park) before they closed, except you had to cross Amsterdam Ave.
Interesting. The Ohio Revised Code sections refer mostly to “animal-drawn vehicles,” and not to horses being ridden without a towed vehicle. Looks like you’d have a pretty free hand to ride horseback anywhere in Ohio.
As a horse is not a wheeled vehicle, would I be able to ride it on the sidewalk, or would I have to stick to the streets?
Hm. I may have to ask my horse-crazy friend/crush object Devin when I phone him tonight.
Incidentally, horse-drawn carriages called calèches are a common sight in downtown Montreal and routinely use city streets.
There are groups of people that go on “trail rides” which are usually long-distance riding and camping trips. One originated in my hometown every year and went to Houston which was over 200 miles away. They passed through towns and small cities and small cities on the way there.
I live in a Boston suburb and my house is zoned for horses and people ride up and down our street all the time.
Horses can be used for transport around here. In the city they have to wear diapers so they don’t shit on the city streets. The last ordinance passed a couple months ago. You can’t raise stock in the city, and a horse is a stock animal. On the road carriages have to have lights. Saddle horses can’t be ridden on the road in the dark. You will get a ticket for drunk driving if you are on a horse or driving a horse buggy when intoxicated in Wisconsin.
I live in Amish country. Both of our small town’s grocery stores have hitching posts on the edge of the parking lot, and at least one provides a shovel and bucket for cleaning up “exhaust.”
Harmonious, is the diaper thing a Portage city ordinance? I’ve never seen horses in Portage (although I don’t get there often), and I haven’t seen any diapered horses locally.
There are many areas in Phoenix which are zoned as “horse property,” including some which are close to downtown. Still, you’d be crazy to ride your horse on city streets, even if it was legal.
There was a series of letters in one of the London free newspapers recently asking why the mounted police don’t clean up after their horses, whiel dog owners would be fined for neglecting to do so.
The answer was apparently that horse excrement is not counted as fouling as it is “useful manure”. Or so the police said.
I believe Toronto bylaws prohibit livestock in residential areas. I think the ban was enacted in the 1970s. Horsedrawn carriages are also banned, but I think horses are permitted on the streets and have right of way over cars. Horses are not permitted on any of the 400 series highways.
By the way, if you poke around the actual website, be sure to keep your eyes out for the awesome phrase “anal cleavage”, in reference to Clydesdales and their troublesome ass-anatomy.
On carriages, manure bags sometimes hang across the traces: like so.
It’s very high fiber, but they leave a lot and you don’t want to be stepping in it. Those cops are using a silly excuse. The road doesn’t benefit from having horse apples on it. The city parks are not a place to be leaving manure around either.
What the police wanted to say was because we don’t want to look like a twits.
It’s interesting that the livestock ban would be enacted that late. I would have expected the mid-fifties. Aren;t such things aimed more at people raising chickens and such, though? I wonder whether a horse would fit more under the exotic-pet regulations.
