Scout's traffic training in New York City

It’s very easy to take a horse to New York City and there are many hotels that accept all animals, great-and-small, from Aardvarks to Zebras.  When doing charitable training, we have been amazed at the number of hotels that want to help, and we have had many major hotel chains donate our rooms. 

Click here to see a list of horse-friendly hotels in New York City

Last year the MGM Grand donated four rooms when we were training Scout and Pal in Las Vegas.  During that stay, Howie Mandell approached Donna and Pal, and asked lots of questions.  Donna had never heard of Howie, but she quickly became a fan when we all attended his show at the MGM.

We dined with Scout at the famous Carnegie Deli and we were greeted by Milt Parker, the legendary owner. We also met Laura Barnes, the author of the fantastic Ernest series of children’s books, a super-nice lady with a shared love of horses.

We stayed near Times Square in Hells Kitchen and walked down 8^th Avenue to the Javits Center. 

Any gastronome will tell you that a do-not-miss dining event is Grey’s Papaya.  Native New Yorkers know that combining fantastic hot dogs with papaya juice is a culinary delight, and we had great fun munching dogs at Gray's Papaya near Madison Square Garden.

We also decided to take a working guide horse to the Book Expo conference and we mounted a bookmark dispenser to Scout’s harness.  It’s interesting that people at the conference exchange bookmarks instead of business cards!

Billy Crystal did the opening ceremonies and the conference was well-attended by publishers and authors.  Vendors were doing everything that they could think of to promote their titles and the aisles were packed with animals (one had a giant tree sloth) and hundreds of people dressed-up in costumes.  Ben Franklin was there to promote his book “Fart Proudly” and he was quite fond of Amy and Scout.

Scout liked our spacious hotel room in Hells Kitchen.

Scout is a bit of a show-off and he displayed himself a few times, but a quick tap and the command "put that back" kept him socially acceptable.

Scout is trained to relieve himself on-command, and all we had to do was find a patch of grass and off he went, no problems.

Scout is used to dogs of all sizes and we met several service dogs at the Book Expo conference.

Scout has had many hours of escalator training and he has no problems with moving sidewalks.

All-in-all it was an excellent opportunity for Scout to refine his navigation skills and he performed exceptionally well in heavy traffic and chaotic sidewalks.