If you’ve ever been to a Penn State football game or any big Penn State event, you’ve probably seen a police officer on a horse.

Well, did you know these horses are not just found in State College but in Meadville, Scranton, Philadelphia, and sometimes outside the Pittsburgh area? The horses and their respective police officers patrol the entire Keystone State. They stay at a facility in Hershey, but the state department is in the process of building a brand new facility for horses.

The State Police was established in 1905. Since then it has had horses, and the department is planning on bringing in more horses for its units in the future. As of the start of 2025, the State Police has 26 horses but can house up to 30, according to Sergeant Carrie Neidigh of the Pennsylvania State Police and the tactical mounted section supervisor for the North American Mounted Unit Commanders Association.

Each horse has a barn name — the name they come with before police give the horse a B name for its role with the Bureau of Emergency and Special Operations.

The State Police get its horses either by donation or purchase, it matters how old they are, ideally between 5 and 15 years old, and they must be male. How tall the horses are and how bright and full their eyes are is taken into account, too.

It’s important how they interact with people if they’re nervous or calm. There’s a lot that goes into hiring the right horses and the police spend 120 days with the horse to see if he’ll fit into the department or not. If he doesn’t, he goes back to his original owner.

The average age for police horses is 15 years old, but they have horses that range from the age of 5 to 23. Every horse is different for how long it can serve and they dictate to the police when they’re ready to retire. Change in eating habits, arthritic problems, or if they just don’t enjoy their job anymore is when it’s time for them to retire.

Once a horse retires from its job, if they were donated they can go back to their original home, but if they don’t want the horse, the rider can keep the horse. If the rider cannot keep the horse, then the horse is offered to the other officers and they’re also offered to the retired officers or other individuals that have large farms. They don’t send them to another program, and they won’t send them to auction.

“They’ve worked hard for us, so it’s time for them to relax and retire. So we always try to find the best home possible for them,” Neidigh said.

There are a lot of advantages to being on a horse instead of a police car. Neidigh is only 5’3″, so when she’s on top of a horse, she can see a lot more since she sits about 9 feet off the ground. Horses are also great for searches since they can cover more ground quicker and get through places cars cannot. They’re also very attentive and alert to things happening around them, so they can notice something before the officer does.

“When you go to start doing crowd control and moving crowds, eight to 10,000 people flood the Beaver Canyon when Penn State beats Ohio State, you can move that amount of people with 12 to 16 horses. Sixteen is a much better number because you can cover the whole street pretty easily,” Neidigh said. “And, again, it’s not that you wanna bump into people. It’s merely that you’re telling people, ‘Hey, it’s time to go.'”

Horses were not seen when the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX and students flooded Beaver Canyon in February. They were, however, seen at the Donald Trump rally at the Bryce Jordan Center in October, and an officer on horseback broke up a potential confrontation between a Trump supporter and a protester.

Horses also bring the public and police closer together because people are more likely to come up to see a horse than to go up to a police car. Neidigh loves it when people come up and talk to her but warned against a new social media trend.

“There is a new thing going on on TikTok. It is where they come up and ask us to pet, and they then pet the riders instead of the horse. I caution against that. That is not a good idea. That can actually get you arrested. So I send caution out there to everybody that asks to pet. It’s to pet the horses, not the riders,” Neidigh said.