Horse caught on camera riding in back of pickup truck in Texas



HOUSTON – It's expected to see horses at the rodeo, but not on the road.

A Texas mother and daughter traveling from Lufkin to Houston for a gymnastics meet captured video of a horse riding in a truck bed, apparently at high speed, according to KTRK.

"Not the best scenario but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do," witness Ami Parbs said.

Parbs and her family own about 80 acres near Lufkin, Texas and have miniature horses of their own.

"The horse did not look spooked, he looked healthy, actually he looked like he was enjoying the wind blowing in his mane," Parbs said. "The only thing I wish he'd done differently is put the eye covers on."

Another driver captured a still picture near Corrigan, Texas and claimed the truck was going about 70 miles per hour.

Corrigan police said the man wasn't doing anything illegal in the transportation of the horse.

About 60 miles away, at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, some exhibitors and their families criticized the driver's unorthodox transportation method.

"I wouldn't do that with a dog," Waverly Bailey said, parent of a rodeo rider. "Put it in the back of a truck on a highway with a bed down like that. Not a horse."

"It's unsafe. It's unsafe because you don't know what the horse is going to do," Donna Skura said, a horse owner. "That's the thing. He's so big, over the sides."

Police said the driver was on his way to work at the stockyards. He claimed his truck can pull the trailer wouldn't start so he did this as an alternative. A move that made some angry while others were more understanding.

"I don't know the gentleman that was driving the truck but that may have been his only way to transport a horse that he just picked up," Parbs said.

Police said the horse is now safe at the stockyards.