Southampton Police Lt. Susan Ralph adopts retired police horses, plans to offer equine therapy to first responders

Cimmeron, his freshly cleaned red hair shining in the sun, pawed the soil in his paddock, then rolled around in the dirt.

“So your bath lasted about 10 seconds,” his owner, Susan Ralph, said.

After years of pounding the pavement as a member of the Nassau County Police mounted unit, the approximately 36-year-old horse — whose nickname is Cimmy — is now living out his “golden years” at a Smithtown stable.

Over the past eight years, Ralph, better known as Lt. Susan Ralph, spokeswoman for the Southampton Town Police, has adopted Cimmy and three other retired Nassau police horses, two of which are still alive. Like an equine Medicare-plus-wellness program, she provides organic food, aromatherapy and medicinal supplements for her law enforcement “brothers and sisters.”

And when Ralph, 53, takes her own retirement from police work, she said she plans to adopt even more horses, tending to them in their final years and tapping some to be therapy animals for traumatized first responders.

“They served their communities, and they deserve a great retirement like we get,” said Ralph, who lives in Suffolk County. “I want to give them a life where they’re out and they get to make choices on their own. They can go in and out of a stall as they want. We take nice leisurely walks.”

HORSE PATROLS

During their working days, Ralph’s adoptees patrolled mall parking lots, parks and special events, logging four days on and four off, 10 hours or more each day.

“Send in the horses” was a familiar order from commanders for crowd control, at faceoffs after hockey games and during presidential events. Able to see far ahead from their vantage points, officers on horses could form wedges to break up crowds or box in suspects.

The horses also enjoyed more positive assignments, making appearances at schools and other events.

Cimmy was partnered with now-retired officer Patrick Pierson. He said Cimmy was often nervous but regularly braved loud noises and angry crowds: “He trusted me and I trusted him. He was able to do everything that we needed,” Pierson said.

And when it came time for Cimmy to retire in 2015, Pierson said Nassau police weren’t about to give him away to just anybody. The department cares about who gets the horses, and officers will occasionally visit their former equine partners on their own time, he said.

“We want them close, so we can keep an eye on them,” Pierson said.

When Ralph volunteered to give Cimmy his forever home, she said Nassau police launched an extensive background check. Officers interviewed her veterinarian and blacksmith and visited her barn, looking over her horse, Dutch. Afterward, the police tapped her to adopt other horses, she said.

MEET THE HORSES

Of the four horses Ralph has adopted, two remain.

Mild-mannered Cimmy is a quarter horse. He has health problems, including leukemia, but he’s already exceeded the average life span of 25 to 30 years for a domesticated horse.

And then there’s DJ, a quarter horse-draft horse mix who’s about 25, loves to “hold” Ralph’s hands in his lips and has been coping with arthritis.

“DJ loves massages,” Ralph said. “He starts yawning and then he closes his eyes. He literally will fall asleep.”

Ralph’s other two former police horses have died, their ashes returned to Ralph.

Coal, a black Percheron-quarter horse mix who was often used by police to take the lead in crowd control, retired in 2018. He died in October at around 28, in what his veterinarian believes was a cardiac event.

Coal was formerly named Mike, in honor of Nassau Officer Mike Califano, who was killed in 2011 when a truck crashed into his patrol car during a vehicle stop.

“I did the 2016 presidential debate (at Hofstra University) on him and he was just a rock,” Pierson recalled. “He liked to lead me into the stall at night to take his halter off. That was his favorite part.”

Zeus, a massive Friesian, retired at age 8 due to a disease that led to lameness. He died in 2021 after collapsing, cause of death unknown, said Ralph.

“Zeus was my clown,” she said. “You would tell him to laugh, and he would roll up his top lip.”

Having ridden horses since age 5, Ralph said she feels a sort of soul-level connection with them. She and Cimmy, her “heart horse,” can lie down together to relax, something horses won’t do unless they feel safe, and he has some of the same quirks as Cody, her first heart horse, whom she got at age 13.

“I have a connection to each and every one in a different way,” she said. “Each has their own personality, and I love each and every one.”

COVERING COSTS

For Ralph’s retirees, there are no more sirens, angry protesters, hard pavement or training to desensitize them to small fires, the noise of helicopter rotors and firecrackers.

Instead, it’s muffin time for life — Ralph has a cookbook full of horse treat recipes. At Christmas, she loads up on all the soft peppermint candy she can find at local stores — 100 pounds last month — because they’re good for horses’ digestive systems. And she rubs lavender, carrot seed and other essential oils on them (she has a list of each horse’s favorites) to relax them.

One winter, she said she even picked a baggie full of grass at a local park to jump-start Cimmy’s appetite because he refused to eat during a hospital stay and had continued his “hunger strike” upon his return.

Pierson, given free rein to visit the horses, lauded Ralph’s dedication. “You know a horse is happy when he’s sitting there doing nothing or just munching grass,” he said. “It was good to see.”

Pampering the horses is no challenge to Ralph, she says, but money for veterinarians and food is.

She said she spends thousands of dollars monthly on horse care, not including emergency veterinary care. Known for their sensitive digestive systems, horses can often get colic, and each hospital treatment for a serious episode costs her at least $5,000— and that’s if no surgery is involved.

A year ago, Ralph set up the nonprofit Blue Line Stables. She learned recently that the IRS had approved it as a 501(c)(3) charity, which means donations are tax deductible.

“I used to buy expensive shoes,” Ralph recalled with a laugh. “I sold most of them. I like my nails done. I used to go every other week, but now I go once a month. Basically, I would do without. My horses will not. They don’t notice. They only have to know that Mommy loves them.”

Her veterinarian, Ed Schaentzler, said older police horses are prone to both work- and age-related ailments.

WORK-RELATED INJURIES

“With the police horses, they tend to have more chronic muscular skeletal lameness issues than the average horse out there,” said Schaentzler, who owns EMS Equine, a mobile clinic based in Rocky Point. For example, he said, the horses can have foot “concussion” due to walking on hard surfaces and carrying a rider.

Ralph said she pays for corrective shoes for DJ because he has navicular disease, an inflammation of the foot bone and tissue, and holistic supplements from Australia that neutralize the toxins in Cimmy’s blood from his illnesses.

In October, the live video cam at the stable showed Coal had collapsed. Ralph rushed over, she said, but it was too late.

“When I found Coal, I definitely lost it,” she said.

The other horses could sense what happened, she recounted. From the paddock, DJ watched Coal being taken away, and she said she could see his sadness: “I called DJ and he put his head into my chest,” said Ralph. “Everybody was very quiet. When their herd mate dies, they understand.”

Schaentzler said he admires Ralph for taking in retired horses despite the toll.

“I try to tell Susan that you’re getting all these horses that are older and giving them a great life till it’s over,” he said. “But it just breaks her heart every time.”

THERAPY ANIMALS

In addition to caring for the retired horses, Ralph hopes one day to harness their sensitivity — exhibited when Coal died — by running therapy programs for first responders with PTSD.

“If we are calm, they will want to connect with us,” she said. “What better way to help first responders than with first responders?”

Officers, firefighters and EMS workers can be traumatized in a single incident, she said, but PTSD can also build up after years of handling child abuse calls, car crashes and homicides.

Ralph, who helps lead the Southampton Police Department’s officer wellness programs, remembers how some of her own stress over a health diagnosis a few years ago dissolved when her horses stayed by her in the paddock: “Cimmy put his face up to my face and sat with me. Coal was more of my clown and would hold my shirt in his mouth.”

She points to the work being done by the Warrior Ranch Foundation in Calverton, where veterans learn how to manage their emotions while interacting with horses.

“If you’re nervous, the horses will make you feel comfortable,” founder Eileen Shanahan said. “But if you are angry, the horses are not going to go near you. It makes you become self-aware.”

Retired police horses have the background to be therapy animals, Schaentzler said: “They are so well-trained and desensitized that they make for amazing companions after their career.”

Ralph has room for two more retirees now, but she said she plans to buy more land when she takes off her badge. There, she hopes to adopt police horses to her heart’s content, as well as rescue horses that were abused or bound for slaughter — making a herd of her own.

“It’s pure freedom when you’re at a full gallop on a horse,” she said. “They’re the most noble creatures on the face of the earth.”