My most recent experience from early August:

Had a couple of local pre-teen girls (longtime friends' kids) visiting me at Treehouse and we walked down to Margaritaville to get my first-time visitor friend a margarita and let the girls swim out to the trampoline. One of the girls was not a confident enough swimmer so my friend sent her back to me on the shore and headed out to the trampoline with the other. The girl with me is swimming in the water and making friends with the family next to us with young kids. We are in the area nearest the ropes because the entire water area between ropes were packed with people. Two horses with their handlers come riding come up. The horses stop at the edge of (i think) Crystal Waters and Margaritaville. The family who we have "befriended", the mom goes to get her camera for a picture and says something to me about the horses and I tell her very nicely and privately that the beach is very crowded and that, it has been my experience, the horse handlers act recklessly with these poor animals and also that they let them defecate everywhere, without consideration of health hazards. This obviously discouraged her and she decided against the picture. The guy on the horse waiting for people to come get riders or pictures takes the horse in the water IMMEDIATELY on the other side of the Margaritaville ropes and the horse poops in the water RIGHT NEXT TO ALL THE PEOPLE (MANY CHILDREN) SWIMMING. As all the people (including my young charge) come running out of the water, I say to his friend who has actually moved quite close to me - "shame on him for letting that horse poop next to all of these people" and he yells back at me (in front of the children) to SHUT THE F * * * UP.

In defense of Margaritaville, one of the employees came up and after relaying the exchange, he had words with the guy and strongly suggested they move on - but here's the catcher - the "tourist police" walked by within a few minutes and we all watched them walk right by the horses without a word. Now I have seen these same "police" "interact" with almost every vendor walking on the beach (from my perch at Treehouse - it's like a tv show!), but with these guys - not so much as a glance. SO, from my understanding they don't have Vendor's Licenses nor Insurance, but noone stops them...??? Seems a little odd to me...

After about 10 minutes people got back into the water....