HURRICANE, Utah — It was at the end of last month's annual Peach Days parade in Hurricane when a horse that had drawn a carriage filled with the city's mayor and council members seemed agitated after being unhitched.
Mayor Nanette Billings stepped in to help ease the horse's stress with a bucket of water.
"When I sat the water down, I put it right by [the horse's] nose and just sat it down carefully. [The water] splished out a little bit towards the horse’s nose when it reared its head up," the mayor explained. "It wasn't even the head that scared me, it backed itself up right against me, against the horse trailer, and then it just brought his feet up and just knocked me over."
Billings fell face-first and managed to roll under the carriage. Moments later, she was rushed to a nearby emergency room. There, doctors saw the mayor had a hoof print on her ribcage.
The mayor was stabilized after the incident and underwent a four-hour surgery last week. On Friday, she explained how her tendons needed to be screwed back into her bones during the operation.
Billings will be off her feet for the next six weeks, but she's still on the job, taking part in meetings on Friday and intends to be in the office every day next week. All with help from her kids and husband, who serves as the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party.
"She's preserved, and she's just a champ," said the mayor's husband, Willie Billings.
The horse, named Jaguar, is owned by a friend, and Billings said she bears no ill will.
"No, I mean it's a good horse," she said. "Honestly, I would have never even expected it. I rode that horse a couple of months ago, and as I rode the horse, it was a good horse and just really calm, not crazy, and I even brushed it."
Both the parade director, Melanie Roberts, and the mayor said there will be no changes to how Peach Days deals with horses and livestock during next year’s event. And Billings, who participated in rodeos as a 4-H girl, said it’s not her first rodeo dealing with an emotional horse.
"I feel like I've been in a rodeo that I did not sign up for," she said. "It's just an accident, and accidents happen."
