In Beaufort’s carriage tour businesses, heat + horses = shorter work days

After leading another tour of downtown Beaufort on Thursday morning, Chief rested near his usual watering hole with an ice-cold towel on his back.

The 18-year-old white horse is a veteran of carriage tours. He knows to expect the traffic sounds that are part of his daily routine and is learning to navigate detours necessitated by construction.

And during the summer heat, as with the other horses of Beaufort’s two carriage tour companies, Chief is under special scrutiny.

The city’s two tour operators, Sea Island Carriage Company and Southern Rose Buggy Tours, are subject to city rules for caring for the horses during hot weather. The tours are halted for the day when the temperature reading reaches 91 degrees on a device at City Hall that accounts for the temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun position and cloud cover.

A city official then calls the carriage operators based in Beaufort Downtown Marina to halt operations for the day. The tours were done by 11:08 a.m. Wednesday, and the final tours began just after 11 a.m. on Thursday.

“Usually by the time the city calls us, we’re already discussing ourselves,” Sea Island Carriage Company owner Nichole Myers said. “We love them. And when they’re hot, we’re hot.”

The heat limit has been reached six times so far this year, Beaufort Police Sgt. Hope Able said. Tours shut down because of heat about 90 days in 2016, Myers said.

Myers referenced Charleston’s decision to pull horses from the street Wednesday afternoon for the first time this year since new rules enacted in March, according to a report in the Post and Courier. Charleston City Council dropped the heat limit for pulling horses from 98 degrees to 95 degrees, the newspaper reported.

“We’re so particular about it,” Myers said. “We pride ourselves on being one of the lowest temperatures. ... We’re so small compared to some larger cities that (the horses) are like family.”

Beaufort rules require horses be checked by a qualified veterinarian before the summer to judge their ability to handle the heat. After each tour, the horses must rest for 15 to 20 minutes and have their temperature and breathing rate measured.

The readings for each horse are kept in written logs by the carriage operators.

When the tours are done for the day, the horses for both companies return to farms in Burton.

“The horses go back to pasture every night,” said Cai Ariail, a guide with Southern Rose Buggy Tours. “So they’re not stabled at all, which is also very nice for them.”

Ariail slapped a wet towel on the back of his horse, Newman, before spraying the animal down with a hose.

Newman later plodded through the marina parking lot to Bay Street for what would be his final tour Thursday morning. The slight incline from the water trough out of the parking lot is the largest climb the horse would face, Ariail told the tour group.

“Believe it or not, he just finished the hardest part of his day,” Ariail said.

This story was originally published July 6, 2017 at 4:29 PM with the headline "In Beaufort’s carriage tour businesses, heat + horses = shorter work days."