Pair of Decorated Police Horses Head Out To Pasture -- Equine Who Killed Man at 49ers Game Still Working, Incidentally

By Joe Eskenazi Mon., Jun. 15 2009 at 11:11 AM

Categories: Law & Order

Starting tomorrow, it'll be all carrots and no sticks for Kenny and Chip. The pair of longtime San Francisco police horses will be retired in a Tuesday morning ceremony at the Golden Gate Park stables, curtailing a combined 22 years of police work for the pair of horses -- in which, unlike their human counterparts, they never once attempted to forcefully steal San Franciscans' food or were featured in racy videos.

Kenny, 20, and Chip, 15, just showed up for work day-in and day-out; other than defecating on the right-of-way, they never did San Franciscans any harm. Kenny was even the star of a BBC program entitled Extraordinary Animals.

San Francisco police horses spend their golden years at a Sonoma ranch funded by a private benefactor. And it will interesting to see the farewell eventually given to Kenny and Chip's erstwhile colleague, Seattle. That horse was spooked by a plastic bag while working crowd control at a 2008 49ers game, and ran wild through the throngs before killing 78-year-old Eugene Caldwell. SFPD spokeswoman Sergeant Lyn Tomioka said Seattle hasn't headed to Sonoma just yet; the 11-year-old is still living in the Golden Gate Park stables.

A trio of new police horses will fill the horseshoes vacated by Kenny and Chip -- Shorty, 10, who has already worked funerals and parades, Bubba, 6, and Gunny, 12, obtained from the San Jose Police Department.

Tomioka said that a typical San Francisco Police Department horse costs between $4,000 and $7,000 -- which, when you think about it, is a much better investment than a damn Segway.