If Red is a kind and even-tempered soul, Fate is a Pirate Dog, perhaps it is her one blue Merle eye, it captures the somewhat made and mischievous spirit of a dog I call the Pirate Puppy. Fate and I connect to the madness in one another, all we have to do is look at each other and mischief follows. She is up for anything at any time, all the time, day or night. She fights sleep like a two-year-old human in a tantrum, she is ready to work at any time, and sometimes shriek in protest when she is left behind.
I believe she loves to taunt me, she loves to go into any room with a trash can, pull out a tissue, pop up in the living room door, stare me in the eye, drop the tissue and run. Farmers have always cautioned me not to have any animal smarter than me, I think I might have crossed the line. Somehow, once or twice a day, she manages to sneak up stairs, pick a sock or two out of the clothes basket and hide it under the bed. I have never seen her go upstairs or caught her in the act.
She never damages the sock, she just gathers them in a stash under the bed. I think she must chuckle in her crate at the thought of me coming upstairs and cursing, crawling under the bed for my socks. I admit to loving the mad gleam in her eye. I love having pirate dog, I am, after all, a man with the tattoo of a real-life Jewish Pirate – Moses Cohen Hernandez – on my right forearm, a Jewish star with a skull and cross bones centered in it.
Fate will not be one of border collies who knows 500 words – I can’t imagine a more useless and selfish thing to teach a dog. But around her she will get to use her brains, she will not be teaching English in any school. On walks in the woods. With sheep in the back-yard. With two restless people who love to ride around with dogs. When she rides in my car, she is the navigator, she puts her long hind legs on the rear seat, her front legs on the front seat divider, and her head on my shoulder, where she keeps a close eye on traffic. I hope she never gets hold of a key to the car.
In her book Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Estes tells the very haunting story of Skeleton-Woman, a skeleton caught in a fisherman’s net. At first, the fisherman is afraid of Skeleton-Woman, then he opens his home to her and takes her in and accepts her. He feeds her and when he sleeps he dreams, and when he dreams, he cries, and Skeleton-Woman drinks his tears and comes to life.
The fisherman gives her his heart. When Skeleton Woman uses the fisherman’s heart, she receives the only thing that really matters, the only thing capable of creating pure and innocent feeling. The story contains a promise: if you allow a woman to become more palpable in your life, she will make your life larger in return. When you help to free her from her tangled and misunderstood state and realize her as a teacher and a lover, she becomes your ally and your partner.
Giving one’s heart for new creation, for new life, writes Estes, for the forces of Life/Death/Life, is a descent into the realm of feeling and emotion. It may be difficult for us, especially if we have been wounded by disappointment or by sorrow. But when we help bring Skeleton-Woman to full life, we come close to the one that has always been close to us.
Maria read me this story this morning, and then gave it to me to read. We were both quiet, numbed a bit by the intense feeling of it, and the many implications for us. This, we both said, is our story, it was our story and is our story still.
When a man gives his whole heart, writes Estes, he becomes an amazing force – he becomes an inspiratrice, a role that in the past has been reserved for women only. When he and Skeleton Woman become lovers and sleep together, then he becomes truly fertile, he is invested with feminine powers in a masculine world. He carries the seeds of new life and necessary deaths. He inspires new works within himself, but also in those close to him.
“Over the years, I have seen this in others and experienced it in myself,” writes Estes. “It is a profound occasion when you create something of value through your lover’s belief in you, through his heartfelt feeling about your work, your project, your subject. it is an amazing phenomenon.” And, she adds, it is not necessarily limited to a lover. It can occur through anyone who gives his or her heart to another in a deep manner.
The bond is a gift to the man as well as the woman. His embrace of the Life/Death/Life nature will eventually give him countless ideas and life plots and situations and colors and images without parallel. For the Life/Death/Life nature, the Wild Woman archetype, has at her disposal all that ever was and ever will be. When she creates, sings flesh onto her skeletal frame, the person whose heart she uses feels it, it is filled with creation himself, it bursts with creation.
In our world, it seems we sometimes compete to see who is the greatest victim. Women often have hard lives, so do men. Life is wonderful, but it rarely easy for anyone. Men so often hide their hearts, bury them in greed and anger and hurt. I lived so much of my life in disappointment and sorrow, I had given up on love and life, I thought of myself as on the edge of life. I had closed myself off to feeling and connection, my home was a moat and the bridge was always up. In one sense, I was already dead.
Perhaps that was why I plunged myself so deeply into hospice work, I was preparing to die and wanted to know how it worked, I wanted to swim in this awful and beautiful stream.
When I met Maria, we drank of so many tears of the other, we both came to life. We found the only thing that truly matters. In helping her to free herself of her tangled and misunderstood state, I was freeing myself. I very much honor the idea of the Inspiratrice.
It would be wonderful to be one.
It is not for me to say what kind of force I am, but I do believe an amazing force entered my consciousness and revived my soul, I changed my life completely, quickly and painfully. It called me to inspire others if I could. A part of me was invested with feminine powers of intuition, I began to leave the ethos and value system of the masculine world, it seemed lifeless and cold to me. I embraced – and lived – the Life/Death/Life nature – perhaps hospice taught me that – and my head has been spinning ever since with ideas and plots and situations and colors and images without end.
I saw Maria come to life, and so I came to life as well, and together. It was-is-an amazing phenomenon.
In Estes story, the Skeletal Woman take’s the fisherman’s heart and turns it into a drum. Thus, the heart is a drum. A drum made of heart will call up the spirits that are the essence of human life.
A new challenge for Fate, some new decisions for me. Susie, Liam’s mother, has gotten increasingly belligerent and challenging to Fate, she does not recognize her as a herding dog, and Fate does not yet have the eye or the presence to get in Susie’s face and back her off. Susie would never dare to charge Red in the way she is charging Fate.
Fate is handling it very well, she holds her ground and pays attention, but I want to be very careful and not let Susie spook the puppy or cause her to lose confidence. She will need all of it. One solution is to keep Red nearby, but I don’t want Fate to only with with Red, she needs to focus on the sheep, not the other dog. I stand close to her and support her, but I really want to keep her back from the flock until she is bigger and stronger and willing to give Susie a nip on the nose, which is what she needs.
So the trick is to keep working, to expose her to the sheep, but on her own terms for now, in big spaces where she can move freely. The good news is that she doesn’t run off, she stand her ground and will show her teeth if necessary. This is what we have to develop, slowly and carefully.
The light is my daily sacrament, the world’s gift to me, my landscape is a great canvas, it has changed beyond my imagination. I came from a different world, I am home in this world, I have found my place and my space. My love, too. It is my work to support her every day in every way, her life, her work, her strength, as she supports me. This morning, she and her pony took a walk around the farm, they graced my landscape.
We all live in our own landscape, it is as beautiful as we care for it to be.
I’ve been writing about the carriage horses for nearly two years now, to my continual surprise, in that time I have read a hundred books about horses, read a thousand studies, talked to a score of veterinarians, made a dozen visits to their stables, gone to see their carriages in the park, made many visits to working horses, talked to carriage drivers and the people who seem to hate them, talked with countless behaviorists trainers and horse owners and advocacy groups and children and lovers in the park.
I’ve said before that I’ve gotten used to the idea that the horses are talking to me, sending me messages.
My friend Chief Avrol Looking Horse tells me it happens to him all of the time, and my friend Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach of Blue Star Equiculture talks to her horses every day. Live and grow and change. And open up.
This morning, at the usual time – 3 a.m. – I woke up thinking to take all of the things I have read, heard and learned about the carriage horses. I suddenly realized wanted write about what it means to really love a carriage horse. Where does this impulse come from? I don’t really know.
Animal lovers are diverse and come in many different shapes and styles. But one thing unites almost every one of them. They want and need to be around animals. They always want to make their lives better. This impulse seems to be missing from the bitter debate about the horses, everyone is talking about whether they should remain in New York or not, nobody seems to be talking about how to make their good lives even safer and better.
If you really love a carriage horse, there are things that can be done for them:
If You Really Love A Carriage Horse:
– The first thing you will do, says legendary horse trainer and Robert Redford’s”horse whisperer” Buck Brannaman, who has worked and lived with horses all of his life (in contrast to the mayor of New York City, who has never ridden one or visited one), is find them safe and meaningful work to do. Like pulling a carriage in Central Park, he says. These are the lucky horses.
The big work horses, he and every other trainer and vet say, need work to be healthy, alert and content. Without it, they languish and deteriorate, their big muscles atrophy, their senses dull. Working animals – think of the border collie – need work to be well, it is bred into their genes. The ones to pity, says Brannaman, are those with nothing to do but stand around in pastures or preserves with no activity or stimulation of any kind. Imagine what it would do to you.
If you love a carriage horse, you will hope they find good work to do. Those are the horses that survive.
– You will want to keep them around, to see them, to bring your children to see them, to experience the wonder of seeing a horse in a beautiful park, in their most natural habitat. You will wish for them to be part of our everyday lives, for them, for you.
– If you really love a carriage horse you will read about them and their history. Books like “Horse In The City,” by Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr. Articles by the famed biologist Jared Diamond, who notes in his important work that horses are perfect domesticable animals with dominance hierarchies, a tolerance for other species, genetic malleability, and herding instincts.
You may not have heard of this research before, it seems the law governing the welfare of the big horses is that only the people who know nothing about them are entitled to speak loudly and decide their fate and their future. You can decide it for yourself, as I did.
– You will wish to keep them safe and protected, if you love them. The city could close off one lane a day during rush hour so the horses could ride to and from their work without breathing those fumes you hear so much about, without risking any contact with trucks or busses or taxicabs. The city could seek to rebuild the empty horse stables of Central Park and keep some or all of the horses there. If you really love a carriage horse, you might with to actually help them rather than make them go away.
– You will bring to bear the great power of the big city – it built Central Park, after all, and the parks along the water, and great museums, and just arranged to build 20,000 new units of affordable housing – on the billionaire developers who drool over the West Side stables. Let them buy the land in exchange for big and roomy and safe stables, close to the park, with great ventilation and roomy and ventilated stalls. Make one of those deals we read about every day. The city makes deals like that every day. They could help the horses and ensure their safety and future at the same time. And it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a nickel.
If you really love the horses, you will work to get them modern and comfortable new homes, rather than ban them. You will want to protect them. Pope Francis, in his encyclical “Laudato Si,” notes that “our indifference or cruelty towards fellow creatures of this world sooner or later affects the treatment we mete out to other human beings. We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is ‘contrary to human dignity’.”
And it works both ways. Every act of cruelty against the carriage drivers is an affront to human dignity. The campaign against the carriage horses has been marked by hatred and cruelty towards human beings, our cruelty towards people sooner or later affects the treatment we mete out to the animals.
– You will want to keep alive, not send them off to peril. That is the most elemental right of animals – so survive in our world. More than 155,000 horses will be sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico this year, and for the horse’s sake, do not be misled by the disturbingly naive claim that there is a safe and clean and rich rescue farm waiting for each horse if they are banned. That is dishonest and false, no one who knows anything about horse rescue believes it, and the people who claim they are speaking for the rights of animals will not tell anyone where those farms are and where the many millions of dollars it would take to care for all of these horses are coming from. If you love a carriage horse, demand to know what will happen to each one if their work is taken away.
– If you love a carriage horse, you will want to be around them. You will want them to be around us. You will wish to visit them, touch them, bring them carrots and apples, stroke their soft noses, take photos of them, bring your kids and nieces and nephews to see them. Horses everywhere are going wonderful therapy work with children in need, if you really loved them, you would push for more programs like that in New York City. Animals that work with people and love them can pay their way in many different ways. Pulling light carriages in the park is one iconic way, helping troubled or disabled people is another.
If the horses go, most of the children of New York will never see one again. The ancient string that connects the horses and human beings will be cut, broken forever. A mistake that can never be undone.
– You will keep them working with people, not separate them. Horses, like dogs or cats, are domesticated animals, they need people and have worked with them for centuries. If you really love a horse, you will know that they need people as much as we need them. They attach to them in very powerful ways, it is especially cruel to separate a working animal from the human beings they work with and who care for them.
By all accounts, the carriage horses of New York are content and healthy and most are much loved by the people who work with them. If you really love a carriage horse, you will wish to make their lives better, to love them all the more. Not to banish them from our lives.
The campaign to ban the carriage horses has failed, at least for now. We have learned a lot. Many people love the horses and will seek out the truth about them and fight for them. There are many people who find the abuse of the people in carriage trade abhorrent and who will fight for them. The people seeking to ban the carriage horses are dishonest, they have been caught in one lie after another. They refuse to account for the vast amounts of money they are spending. They know nothing about horses and are not qualified to make judgments about their future.
I have always liked the idea of codified rights for animals, but I can’t help but see that the people claiming to speak for the rights of animals don’t wish to do any of these things: they will not visit the horses or bring them carrots and apples, they have no ideas for making the horses safer or more comfortable, they do not believe people and working animals should be together at all, they seem to have a visceral contempt for any kind of expert, scientist, medical person or horse advocate, they believe the horses ought to be replaced by huge electric cars.
. What does love for the carriage horses mean to them besides driving the horses from New York?
If you love a carriage horse, you will wish to improve their already safe and secure and regulated lives. I stand with Pope Francis and with the carriage drivers. Love the animals, protect them, love the people and protect them as well. The animals are our cherished partners, they are not entitled to perfect lives any more than we are.
Any single act of cruelty towards any living thing, human or animal, is an affront to human decency and human dignity and will corrupt and poison the way we treat one another.
