Kansas-trained wild horses to be in D.C. inauguration parade

Kansas-trained horses will have a hand – er, hoof – in the inauguration of America’s 45th president on Friday.

According to a news release from the Kansas Department of Corrections, 13 wild mustangs that were trained at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility will be used in the inauguration parade for president-elect Trump in Washington, D.C.

The horses will be ridden by a combination of Fort Riley soldiers and U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Rio Grand Valley Sector, according to the release. The horses are used for patrolling the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

The mustangs trained in Hutchinson are wild horses that were captured on government land by the Bureau of Land Management, the release said. As part of the Department of Corrections “burro program,” offenders are employed to provide training to the horses to help make them useful for organizations and individuals who adopt them.

“It’s a great honor and very exciting to see horses that were trained here in our program participating in such a historic event,” said Dexter Hedrick, the program’s manager, in the release. “The offenders who work with the horses are taking great pride in knowing that they contributed to something so meaningful.”

Nearly all of the horses used in the Rio Grand Valley Sector come from the Hutchinson program. Over the years, more than 60 horses patrolling the border from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego were trained at Hutchinson, according to the release.

The inauguration parade along Pennsylvania Avenue will follow the swearing-in of Trump, the Republican nominee who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November U.S. presidential election.

This story was originally published January 19, 2017 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Kansas-trained wild horses to be in D.C. inauguration parade."