Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007
by Patricia M. Murret | Staff Writer
Even after his horse Chance threw him from the saddle, Officer Thomas LoCascio of the U.S. Park Police held on to the reins.
‘‘Nice round of applause to Tom for showing us what not to do during the obstacle course,” boomed an announcer via loudspeaker Sunday.
Horses whinnied and brayed on Saturday and Sunday while they waited to compete in the 24th annual North American Police Equestrian Championships at the Montgomery County fairgrounds in Gaithersburg.
The Maryland-National Capital Park Police and the U.S. Park Police hosted the event, which came to Gaithersburg for the second time. The fairgrounds first hosted the event in 1995.
More than 120 riders from around the country and Canada competed Saturday in dress inspection and equitation competitions designed to show basic horsemanship.
Sunday they navigated a timed obstacle course that demanded leading their horses through 10 unnatural situations in about four minutes.
‘‘I watched our horses throughout the year to get a little bit of an idea what they’re responding to,” said Sgt. Glenn Jones of the Capital Park Police’s Prince George’s County division.
He took notes all year to design the event, he said.
Sgt. Rick Pelicano, who chaired the event’s organizing committee, said mounted-police training sometimes demands ‘‘bomb-proofing” a horse.
‘‘Horses are flight animals, so they are inclined to run when they are scared,” Pelicano said. Course challenges ‘‘can be anything from shooting blanks off a gun on horseback to standing next to a truck with a large ‘Jake Brake,’” or truck engine.
The competition included 16 riders from the Maryland-National Capital Park Police’s Montgomery and Prince George’s county divisions, who patrol 26,000 acres and assist local police departments.
Officers Jeffrey T. Adcock of Clarksburg, Dennis Benden of Damascus, Jeff Coe of Laurel, Marc Fanelli of Germantown, Kelley Hagan of Clarksburg, Nancy E. Jones of Odenton, Alfredo L. LaPorte II of Laurel, Sean Thomas of New Market and Sgt. Rick Haas of Mount Airy represented Montgomery.
Officer Myrical Biddle of Lanham, who is assigned to the Prince George’s County division, won a fifth-place award for uniform inspection. She was the division’s sole prizewinner.
‘‘My horse didn’t do too well,” Haas said Sunday after riding his assigned horse, a Shire named Roman. ‘‘He got frustrated, flustered, which made each obstacle more difficult.”
Bubbles stopped the huge horse in his tracks.
Successful competition is ‘‘more about how the officer maneuvers the horse through each obstacle, not the obstacle itself,” said Officer Megan Lau, who helps Pelicano train the Montgomery County division.
The bubbles that spooked Roman came from a simulated ‘‘carnival,” including a moonbounce humming louder than a leaf-blower, a 40-foot red air puppet dancing in the wind and bubbles blown from a machine.
Another carnival stop required halting before a clown who blew up balloons until they popped.
Adcock’s horse balked and raised his front legs before clip-clopping over several closely placed logs.
Like many before him, he stopped short at a simulated dark stream with a floating detergent bottle.
‘‘It’s a blast, we’re having fun,” said Agent Chris Baca of the United States Border Patrol in Willcox, Ariz., who attended for the first time with Agent Bobbi Schad of Tucson. The pair placed fifth and third in the western equitation competition, respectively.
‘‘We left on Sunday and we drove, we got there on Thursday night, about 2,400 miles total, with three horses with us,” Baca said. ‘‘I hope we get to come back next year and bring more people.”
