Okay. I’ll admit it. When I was an officer on the Toronto Police Mounted Unit, I really enjoyed all the attention I got when I rode through the busy city streets. It was the 1960s, and people saw my horse and me as a glimpse of the past, something almost ethereal amidst the chaos of modern life. I always felt proud as we pranced along, turning heads and putting smiles on children’s faces.

Yet I knew I had to make the most of those moments. For, at some point, my horse would inevitably stop, lift his tail and make a steaming “deposit” on the pavement. Then that charming vision of the past would not only fade but disappear. Children would gag and grown ups would hustle by, pretending not to notice. Nature seemed to call at the most inopportune moments and often in regrettable locations. When it did, all I could do was try to maintain my dignity. I would avert my gaze and try to appear quietly detached.

In those days, many Toronto residents kept gardens. So I took heart in the fact that these random curbside offerings were a source of free fertilizer for the city’s gardeners. Still, I do recall a few episodes that sorely tested the otherwise warm relationship the Mounted Unit enjoyed with the public.             

Unexpected deposit

One incident, in particular, stands out in my memory. It happened on a quiet residential street, while I was in the saddle writing a parking ticket. I was focused on my paperwork, so I didn’t notice that my mount, Major, had casually edged over to the car, a flashy MG convertible sports car. But soon I heard the unmistakable sound of the gelding relieving himself right on top of the driver’s seat.

My first instinct was to flee the scene and hope that the blame would fall on some other horse. But I quickly realized that wouldn’t fly—the only horses left in the city belonged to police. Then, for a moment, I thought that if I fled the scene, it might be hard to trace the infraction to any specific police horse. But one look at the glistening heap on the car’s seat nixed that option. There was only one horse in the mounted unit’s stables capable of producing a plop of that magnitude and I was sitting on him. Major was a favorite of the Inspector and the coddling he received as a result had left him grossly overweight. The gelding regularly consumed as much feed as two or three of the other horses combined.

The guilty party

No, they wouldn’t have to call in the detectives to determine who the guilty party was in this case.

I wrote an apologetic note on the back of a cancelled parking ticket, slipped it under the car’s windshield wiper and headed back to the stables to fess up. The duty sergeant wasn’t too happy when I gave him my report. In fact, by the way he reprimanded me, you would have thought it was I and not Major who had dumped in the MG.

I left the old horse in his stall for the rest of that afternoon and, armed with every piece of cleaning equipment the station had to offer, I returned to the scene of the crime and cleaned up his mess. The car’s owner was very understanding, and coincidentally, after that day, he never seemed to get any more parking tickets…

Pit stop

Officers sometimes had to heed to call of nature, too. And they occasionally made phone calls or performed other tasks that required that they dismount. In a bygone era, it was easy to find a helping hand. Lots of city dwellers were familiar enough with horses to happily step in to hold your horse while you made a phone call or went into a washroom. But by the 1960s these handy volunteers were few and far between. So most policemen visited the restroom at the stables just before they went out on patrol.

Nonetheless it was always possible to get caught short, and most officers had strategies for these rare emergencies. For example, if we were patrolling in a park and there weren’t many people around, we might dismount and seek the quick refuge behind a bush. But there were limits. If we had more serious business to attend to, things could get difficult. An unscheduled return to the station might be necessary but sometimes that option was impractical.

That was the case for a friend of mine who was patrolling a park one summer day. Suddenly he was gripped by series a fierce stomach cramps. He spotted an outhouse nearby and pointed his horse toward it. The adjacent children’s playground was crowded, but he didn’t see anyone who could hold his horse while he used the restroom.

Desperate measure

Ever resourceful—and a bit desperate—he came up with a plan whereby he could use the facility and hold his horse at the same time. This would be termed multi-tasking today.

Trying not to draw too much attention, he dismounted and quietly led his horse over to the latrine. When nobody was looking, he turned around and sheepishly backed through the door and into a bathroom stall. Keeping hold of the reins and being careful not to scare the horse, he partially closed the door and set about his business.

I don’t know how long he was in there, but at some point, someone or some- thing spooked his horse. The wild-eyed animal reared and lurched backwards. But my friend obeyed the cardinal rule of never letting go of your horse. He was catapulted through the outhouse door with his britches and boxers crumpled around his ankles. And he was dragged a considerable distance over the turf before he got his horse stopped. While startled women shrieked and shielded their children’s eyes, the red-faced cop slipped behind his horse, pulled up his drawers and regained his composure. He then mounted up and, saluting the assembled crowd, rode off as if nothing had happened.

Twas ever thus

My old mounted unit is still going strong today in Toronto. And I am sure the officers have benefited greatly from advances in technology over the last 40 years. But horses still do what horses have always done and the same is true of riders. In that respect, I’ll bet nothing much has changed!

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