16 June

The Windowsill Gallery: Late Afternoon

by Jon Katz
The WIndowsill Gallery: 4 p.m.
The WIndowsill Gallery: 4 p.m.

My wife the artist is the summer curator of the windowsill galleries that dot the farmhouse. This one is in my study, and it has blossomed this week into something beautiful and captivating. She mixes bottles, flowers, trinkets and old glass and there is a heart at the top to remind me of love. I love the gallery, it changes every day. In the late afternoon, the sun is good to it.

16 June

Mud Dog Gets A Bath

by Jon Katz
Mud Dog
Mud Dog

Fate is a mud dog. She runs like a border collie, she rolls in mud like a Lab. She loves mud, she digs holes all day every where she can, she is a hoarder, she hides treats and rawhide chews under pillows, beneath sofas, in corners, behind trash cans. She does not like to get a bath. She will need to get used to it. Today she wallowed in a swamp and was a black dog.

16 June

Nine Questions For Good People: Is It Progressive To Kill The NYC Carriage Horses?

by Jon Katz
What Is Progressive?
What Is Progressive? Maria Wulf And Pamela Rickenbach

Dear Progressives,

The mayor of New York City, Bill deBlasio, is seeking to be the national leader of the progressive political movement rising up across America. I am not keen on labeling myself – labels are a national disease to me – and I like many of the things the new mayor of New York City is doing, especially his efforts to bring more low and middle-income housing to the city and to provide day care to hundreds of thousands of kids.

His campaign to ban the carriage horses, however, has soiled his progressive credentials, and I am writing this to urge you to consider the truth about the carriage horses – I have worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Boston Globe and CBS News and take the truth and facts seriously – is disturbing, dishonest, and elitist, it is anything but progressive and calls into question his integrity, humanity and courage.

The carriage horses are not being abused, the people who own them and drive them are being abused and savagely.

Here are five things I hope you will consider about the long and very cruel campaign to ban the carriage trade from New York City, all in the name of progressivism and the love of animals.

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l. Is it progressive to kill the carriage horses in order to save them? There are more than 200 carriage horses in New York City. Equine rescue groups estimate it would cost approximately $24 million to feed and care for them for the rest of their lives. More than 155,000 horses in America were sent to slaughter last year in Canada and Mexico under the most brutal and cruel conditions. The mayor and the animal rights groups seeking to banish the horses claim they have a home for every one of them, they will not provide the name of a single rescue farm, nor will they offer any details on where the money would come to care for them. Every reputable equine rescue person in America believes there are few places that could care for these horses, they weight between 1,500 and 2,000 lbs,  especially in these times, and no one with any kind of credentials believe a good home has been found for each one of them. Nor does anyone believe their care and health would be better than it is now.

2. Is it progressive to put more than 300 working, law-abiding people out of work and endanger their families, mortgages and the future education of their children. The mayor says jobs have been found for each one, but that is an especially cruel lie. The mayor proposes that the carriage drivers be offered jobs driving “green” taxis in the outer boroughs of New York. It is not clear that any such jobs are available, and even if they were, driving a green car in Brooklyn is not the same thing as driving a horse carriage in Central Park. The presumption that these animal lovers and individualists  – many coming from immigrant families that have worked with horses for centuries – would want these jobs or take them is raw elitism. It is not progressive.

3. It is progressive for the mayor to take a lot of  money from a notoriously sleazy real estate developer – in this case Steven Nislick of NYClass – and then suddenly declare that banning the carriage horses was the number one priority of his administration and would be accomplished in his first week of office?

Nislick has spent millions of dollars in his effort to destroy the carriage trade. He has dismissed the carriage drivers as “random people,” and said the horses would be better off dead than pulling carriages in Central Park.

According to the New York Post, he hired private detectives to follow the drivers for weeks in the hopes of finding violations, he threatened to punch a New York Daily News photographer in the face after the paper opposed the carriage ban, he took part in eventing, the most dangerous sport for animals in the Olympics, he and his organization have subject the members of the carriage trade to a campaign of dehumanization, exclusion, harassment and the ugliest and most personal kinds of insults, intimidation and physical demonstrations.

Is cruelty and abuse towards humans in the name of loving animals progressive?

4. Is it progressive to lie about the safety and welfare of the horses, and their role in the life of New York City? The mayor and his supporters in the animal rights movement claim the horses are endangered and dangerous to life in the city. In 150 years, no human has ever been killed by a carriage horse (nearly 300 New York residents died last year in motor vehicle accidents.) In the past 30 years, three horses have been killed in traffic accidents, three of out millions of trips and rides.

5. It is not progressive to claim the horses are abused and mistreated and unhealthy, as the mayor has. It is simply not true. The North American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association Of Equine Practioners, the two most prestigious equine medical organizations in North America reported last year that the New York Carriage Horses were healthy and well cared for, there was no evidence of abuse or mistreatment.

On the contrary, reported the two organizations, the carriage horses are among the best cared for and most fortunate equines in America. The NAVMA and AAEP joined more than a score of veterinarians, behaviorists, trainers and horse lovers who examined the horses and found them healthy and well cared for.

6. It is not progressive for government to overreach it’s authority and mandate and threaten the freedom, way of life and property of innocent people who have paid their taxes, worked hard, committed no crimes, broken no laws and violated none of the hundreds of regulations (and five different city agencies) legislated to oversee their work and the animals in their care. Of the thousands of animal cruelty and abuse regulations reported to the city government last year, not one was a complaint about the carriage horses. John Locke, the creator of the idea of modern democracy, wrote that the primary function of a democratic government is to protect freedom and property, not to arbitrarily take them away without cause. The mayor seeks not only to destroy an industry, but a way of life. There is nothing progressive about that.

7. It is not progressive to destroy a business that has been beloved and profitable for more than 150 years without cause or due process. All three city newspapers have opposed the carriage ban, so do a majority of city residents – 62 per cent in the last poll – the Chamber of Commerce and the city’s Central Labor Council. Every age, gender and racial element in New York supports the horses. Is is really progressive to brush off the popular will and dismiss it? There is not a child, tourist, or lover in the world who would favor banning the New York Carriage Horses, an iconic part of the city’s soul for so long a time. The mayor, especially arrogant for a so-called populist, refuses to visit the stables, meet with the carriage trade, talk to a driver. One carriage driver approached the mayor with his young son and asked him why he was seeking to ban his livelihood. Because, said the mayor, walking away, the work you do is immoral. Is elitism progressive? The mayor has dehumanized the people in the carriage trade in order to destroy them, placing them outside the moral community that governs the city.

8. It is progressive for the mayor to despoil the history and environment of Central Park, one of the great urban and environmental achievements in American history,  by replacing the carriage horses with large and expensive ( and quite ugly) vintage electric cars, as the mayor has proposed? The animal rights activists and the mayor have made environmental history by proposing for the first time anywhere than energy-powered electric motor vehicles are more friendly to the environment than draft horses. Central Park was designed for the carriage horses, they are as natural an element there as trees. It would be an environmental and cultural tragedy to send the horses out into peril while bring more motor vehicles into the great park, which was not designed for any of them.

9. Is it progressive to abuse human beings in the name of loving animals? The Native-Americans have been saying for many years that we will either learn to live in harmony or we will perish together. We are at a crossroads, and the horses call to us to come together and treat people and animals with dignity. That is the theme of the Blue Star Prophecy, a symbol of which is held above by the artist Maria Wulf and Pamela Rickenbach, co-founder of Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse sanctuary in Massachusetts and a supporter of the New York Carriage Horses.

The mayor is especially sensitive to his progressive image, he already seems ambitious for a higher office than mayor of New York City. That is his vulnerability. If you wish to do the right thing, to support honest people in trouble, to further the true values of a democratic culture, to keep animals in our world and save the New York Carriage Horses and keep them in their safe homes, please consider writing the mayor a letter at this address: Mayor Bill deBlasio, City Hall, City Hall Park, New York, N.Y., 10007.

Injustice and cruelty are not progressive goals.  Neither are sleazy politics in the name of common sense.  You can help.

If you are so inclined, please request that he either honor the true values of the progressive movement, or leave the carriage horses alone and in New York City, where they belong.

16 June

How To Love A Dog

by Jon Katz
How To Love A Dog
How To Love A Dog

My good friend Pamela Rickenbach of Blue Star Equiculture. believes the horses talk to us all the time, and guide us and watch out for us. We kid about this because I have my own ideas about animals and people. I have always been drawn to the attachment side of things, not what the horses and dogs are telling me, but what my love for them and interest in them says about me and about others. It is the people that have drawn me to my writing, not just the animals.

Pamela loves the horses dearly, she is teaching me to open up to them, to hear them, to listen to them. It is hard work for me, I am getting there.

I have a good friend with an out-of-control dog, her dog goes after and hurts other dogs, breaks out of the house, refuses to come when called, lives in a state of chaos and confusion.  My friend sees the dog as a wonderful and free spirit, she can’t help but smile when the dog loses her way. It is so much easier to rationalize the life of a dog than do the hard work of training.

When I see this, I know – I have learned this the hard way – that the dog is a reflection of her. Dogs mirror us, those are the messages they most  often are sending: they love us, but they are showing us what we are like, what is broken inside of us. They are reminding us that we need to do the work on ourselves to be calm and centered so that our animals do the same. My breakthroughs in understanding animals came when I broke through to understand myself, to face the truth about myself.

It is easy to laugh and shout and wag our fingers at the dogs, much harder to see what they are really showing us and hear what they are really telling us: to have a better dog, you will have to be a better human being.

We get the dogs we need, in one way or another, they reflect us, our strengths, our shortcomings, our values, our needs. We get the dogs we deserve.

So for me, training a dog is about my spiritual and moral responsibility to do the work that needs to be done, on me, on the dog, so that we can live in the world together in peace and love and harmony. I never think it is cute when a dog is crazed or aggressive or out of control, I pray quietly for the soul of the dog and the human. It is a minority position for sure, one I rarely talk about. I owe this to my dogs, I ask a lot from them, they give me much in return.

How do you love a dog? I am thinking about this since the arrival of Fate, a dog Maria and I have come to love. She is a perpetual motion motion, curious, busy, restless. She has a wild and mischievous streak I have to be careful of, we each touch a crazy spark in the other, a wild streak. When we spot each other across a room, we make eye contact and all hell breaks loose.

I laugh every time I see her, and smile all of the other times, she came like a fury of joy after a grim and long, hard winter. Her purpose is to keep  us moving, laughing and learning, you cannot be in a funk for too long around this dog, she will not put up with it.

I love a dog with respect. She is not my child or my furbaby, she is not like me, she does not have my thoughts and words and feelings, she has her own, and it is my job to understand hers, not to project my own sorry stuff into her consciousness. She is not a reflection of me, she is Fate. We have a contract, we both will live together in love and dignity.

We we work together we are serious and work hard. No messing around, no distraction. I love to play with her, but I know it is not a good direction for her, it just cranks her up and brings up all of the stuff in her that needs to calm down and be focused and easy. I am teaching her (as is Maria) not to put her mouth on people, not to jump up on them, never to go on our furniture, never to eat or expect human food. So far, so good, she pays no attention to us while we eat.

There is one thing I have not been able to bring myself to do. When she comes into the house from Maria’s studio, she comes racing into my study, she leaps on poor gracious and generous Red, who puts up with it and then she comes racing across the room and leaps into my lap, her tail going, her eyes wide. She is trusting and joyous, if I didn’t catch her she would go flying across my lap and crash onto the floor. I do catch her and she wriggles up my chest and showers me with licks and then tries to chew on my nose or cheek until I pinch her on the nose and stop her.

This connects with the deepest part of me, two souls fusing in the same spirit, it is the point really, of human existence – connection. It is what every dog and every human being truly wants.

I love the affection in her, the spirit, the intense curiosity, the fearlessness of love inside of her. She loves everything in the world and wants to see it, smell it and know about it. She will relish her life every minute of it, she will challenge us to to the same.  When we go out to herd the sheep, she works in just the way I work – serious, focused, crazed by distractions and interruptions, mind and spirit racing.

When you learn  how to love a dog, you are really learning how to love a human.  One trainer told me that if there were a half dozen Labs in the well of the Senate, they would stop fighting and start playing with the dogs and obsessing about their behavior. They would, she said, learn what is important.

You are learning how to love, period. Once again, a dog has opened me up to love, taught me something about it, reminded me of how important it is in our lives.

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