Town Square visitors can take carriage ride around outdoor mall

Nothing spooks Darby. Not the 2-foot-tall army that sprints toward the white Percheron mare every time she approaches the children's park. Not the revelers who slur indecipherable greetings from the Blue Martini balcony. Not even the horseless carriages that cut off her buggy while it circles Town Square every 15 minutes.

"She's what you would call a bomb-proof horse," says the woman at Darby's reins, Maribeth Jalepes. "One time, she looked up at the guys who were trimming the palm trees, but that's about it."

Jalepes and two business partners -- Zaher Fakih and Jason Speer -- began offering horse-and-carriage rides at the outdoor shopping mall earlier this month. (They pay a monthly operating fee to Town Square.)

"We wanted to do something interesting and special, and it just seems like it brings a lot of joy to people," Jalepes says.

To deliver what she calls "the whole fantasy," Jalepes wears an old-time riding habit and Sephora-applied make-up.

"Tourists are always videoing us," she says.

Many claim never to have seen a horse in person and, according to Jalepes, "there's nothing like watching someone pet a horse for the first time."

Jalepes, 41, grew up horse-crazy near Potomac, Md.

"My mom would have to pull the car over all the time, because I would just scream when I saw horses," she says. "It was a daily thing."

Jalepes didn't own her first horse until she was 25, however, so she's making up for it. Darby and eight others occupy Jalepes' 2.25-acre ranch in southwest Las Vegas. (Two more are in traffic-training to be added to the mile-long Town Square route.)

Darby -- who is 12 and could live another 18 years -- pulled buggies for a decade in Tennessee and Florida. Jalepes says she loves work almost as much as she loves peppermint candy and bananas.

Although Darby is unspookable, Jalepes is not. In fact, she has a message for some teenagers who approached Darby a few nights before this interview.

"You can't just run out into the middle of the road and do that," Jalepes says, explaining that "they were away from their parents so they lost their minds for a few hours, you remember how that was."

Darby wears blinders, so admirers are encouraged to approach from the front.

"She's still a horse," Jalepes says.

On a related note, Darby also wears a diaper.

"Not like a person diaper, but it attaches to the harness she wears," Jalepes clarifies, "and when she drops her apples, it catches them."

Jalepes says this decision was made to appease both Town Square and the Clark County Health District.

"I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate the alternative," she says.

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.