Six months ago, our two barn cats lived in the barn, now, especially during this winter, we have two barn cats living in the house. Both of them like to doze on the laps of people, Flo is usually on mine, Minnie cuddling with Maria. The other night I came in and maria was working on her Ipad, she had two cats on her lap, a two-cat night. I’m not really sure how this all happened, but it seems to be taking on a life of his own.
I would have thought the barn cats would have resisted this rush to domesticity, doesn’t seem to be happening.
For me, someone who calls himself an animal lover, someone who believes in the rights of animals in our world, the most sensitive and critically important issue involving the New York City Carriage Horses is this – what will happen to them if the city bans them from New York.
Whether one believes the horses should remain in the city or not, there is this looming thing, this elephant in the room, the most emotional and explosive question: Will the horses be better off when they are banished than they are now? If this is all about the welfare of the horses, isn’t this really the only question that matters, if we are sincerely worried about their rights?
It isn’t an issue, it is the issue. The future of the horses, the fate of these beautiful animals speaks to the future of animals in our world, conflicting notions of what is truly best for them, what place, if any, we can make for them, and the very meaning and nature of the “rescue” idea. It is always for them, is it often for us?
The people pushing for the ban seem to react furiously to the question, they do not care to talk about it. They argue that it doesn’t matter, there is no excuse or justification for preserving an abusive and inhumane business. Since only one person in the carriage industry has been legally accused of abuse or neglect in 150 years, and few objective observers believe the horses are treated inhumanely, that is also a tricky argument to make stick, although in fairness, a lot of people in New York City have come to believe it. Since only one horse has been killed in 20 years (and 155 New Yorkers were killed in 2012 alone) it is also hard to make the case that the city is really getting more and more unsafe for them, although the mayor has bought that argument as well. So what do we know about the truth regarding the horses and their future?
The mayor, the City Council, NYClass, the Coalition To Ban The Carriage Horses, the A.S.P.S.A. and the Humane Society have all issued various and wildly conflicting statements about the future of the horses if they are banned. Their general and nearly unanimous position is that no one – absolutely no one – will suffer from a ban. The carriage horse owners and drivers might disagree, so might the many people who love to ride the carriages, but they do not seem to have a voice in this argument.
The Humane Society calls a ban a “win-win” for everyone. Tourists will no longer be gouged by greedy drivers, horses will no longer be mowed down by trucks and cars, there will be no droppings in the park, traffic will flow more freely, carriage drivers will all be happy driving their new eco-friendly vintage carts around, tourists will love their quiet vintage cars, and most importantly, every single horse will be sent to a farm to spend the rest of their days in the sun, munching on fresh grass.
The truth is, of course, more complicated, and it is not simple to get near it, there is a thick fog of righteousness, argument and anger. I’ve been at it for a couple of weeks, I’m closer. I’ll give it my best and most dispassionate shot.
The most important thing to keep in mind is this: no one knows, really, what will happen to the horses because no one has seen the legislation that will soon be introduced into the City Council seeking to end the Carriage Horse trade. If previous legislation offered by animal rights groups is any clue, the City Council may forbid the carriage horse owners to sell their horses for any kind of work or slaughter. The horses can only be sold to rescue farms or private farms or sanctuaries where they will not be permitted to do any kind of work. I can’t quite imagine how this would be enforced, even it it passes. One previous proposal was worded this way: “The owner shall sell or donate a horse to a private individual who signs an assurance that the horse will not be sold and shall be kept solely as a companion animal and not employed in another horse-drawn carriage business or as a work horse and will be cared for humanely for the remainder of the horse’s natural life…”
Legal experts say it is highly unlikely the courts will permit the city or animal rights groups to tell the carriage owners how to dispose of the horses they own. The owners themselves say if they have to dispose of the horses, some will go to their farms, others will be sold if possible, some will almost certainly be sent to slaughter.
One irony is that many of the horses pulling carriages are rescue horses purchased from race courses and mostly Amish farms where they were often headed for slaughter. Shutting down the city stables might very well have the unintended affect of eliminating a rare outlet for surplus horses, according to a story published by the Associated Press. “If they did not come to New York City, most of these horses would be dead,” says Ian McKeever, who owns nine Central Park horses and has been driving a carriage in the city since 1987.
This is borne out by the fact that in 2013, roughly 140,000 U.S. horses were shipped to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico, most traveled and died under far worse circumstances than those of any working horse in the city. It is hard to understand why animal rights groups would be funneling more horses into this bloody chain. According to the Humane Society itself – I wonder if they read their own reports – unregulated breeding has led to the production of farm more horses than can find work, homes, or life-time care. There are about 500 sanctuaries in the U.S. for retired horses, many are overwhelmed caring for equines – including donkeys – many thousands of which have been abandoned since the recession. These facilities are notoriously under-funded and short staffed. It is unlikely that more than 200 large, healthy, active working horses will find a place on rescue facilities that can accommodate them – they eat at least two bales of hay a day – when so many thousands of equines can’t. And if they do, it is even less likely the conditions they will live under will be better than the highly regulated environments they live in now.
The Associated Press says that in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country, where many of the carriage horses come from, hundreds of horses are sold to buyers for foreign meat factories every Monday at auction, these are mostly horses that are young and healthy and once pulled plows, buggies and carts, or even served as family pets. These horses were discarded because of the rising costs of care or because there was no longer any work for them to do. A number of the carriage horses were, in fact, saved from that fate. It is well known and understood among people who live with animals and love them that work saves the lives of well-treated working animals, it does not end, damage, or shorten them. The implications of this conflict are enormous for animals and the people who own them.
I wonder if the day will come when my town government will tell me that I will have to sell or give my border collie Red to a rescue farm or sanctuary so that he can never be asked to herd sheep again.
The carriage horse owners say that if the carriage horses are banned without restriction, most will likely be sold to other working homes – like carriage companies in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Cincinnati or San Antonio. Some might be sold back to farm work, others retired to the owner’s farms. The horses are generally purchased for $2,000 to $4,000, ten times what a “kill” buyer would pay for a horse as meat. It seems likely that people who have just lost their income and work might need or want to sell horses that valuable, not give them away to rescue farms, where they are not statistically, likely to live longer or be healthier than working carriage horses.
It seems especially cruel and punitive to destroy people’s businesses – none have been charged with any crimes or wrongdoing – and also deny them the right to seek reimbursement for their property or the opportunity to decide the fate of their own animals. None have been charged with abuse or convicted of it, there seems no moral rationale for denying them ownership of their horses. The horses are private property, it is unheard of for municipal governments to dictate the disposal of private property in that way, but then, carriage horses have never been banned from a major American city before.
The Humane Society Of The United States, a vocal advocate for the carriage ban and a growing financial supporter of the animal rights movement, including some of the groups pushing for the ban, claims that it has made provisions for “some” – they do not say how many – of the horses to go to a wealthy horse ranch in Texas. The problem with that kind of vague promise is that the horses are not theirs to provide for, they cannot possibly offer any guarantees or determine what happens to them. The animal rights group NY Class, spearheading the proposed ban, says it plans buy all of the horses for $500 each, an ingenuous offer given their worth and the certainty the owners will reject it. The group also claims to have farms waiting for each horse, but it offers no specifics of any kind.
These kinds of very fuzzy declarations – how many is “some”, who pays the owners for them – undermine the credibility of any genuine or knowing commitment to animal welfare, it would seem their foremost concern would be the horses. But the well-being of the horses seems the lowest priority, not the first.
Christina Hansen, a driver and spokesperson for the carriage horse industry speaks to some of these concerns in her own op-ed piece, published in the New York Post this morning. She challenges some of the most common misconceptions about the carriage horses, all of which have been widely disseminated in the media. Full disclosure: I just met Christina once, talked to her a number of times, I have found her to be honest and reliable in her statements. She is measured and direct when speaking about this controversy. Although she is clearly not unbiased – she works for the carriage horse industry, I recognized her right away as a horse lover. I have seen so many animal lovers in the course of writing my books, I can spot them miles away. Christina is the real deal. Everything she has told me has checked out, has turned out to be verifiable and accurate. She does not hide her own name or sources under the name of “security,” and she has good reason, she is shouted at, followed and protested all of the time.
The Coalition To Ban Carriage horses claims to have done an analysis drawn from city records on 720 carriage horses from 2005 to 2013 that show that about 30 per cent of the horses spent two years or less on the job, thus they won’t be around long anyway. The carriage horse owners vehemently deny that, saying the carriage horses live an average of between 20 and 30 years and work for much longer periods. Their records are open to public scrutiny, as are their stables. In recent weeks, a number of reporters have finally decided to walk in unannounced and taken a look, including one recently from NPR. All have found the stables clean, the horses well-cared for. The websites of the animal rights groups repeatedly claim the stables are filthy, the horses underfed and unable to lie down, that there is no fire protection. None of these claims have been verified by anyone who has seen the stables or the horses.
I have to add that the Coalition To Ban The Carriage Horses refuses to identify any of their sources, methods, investigators, researchers or writers, claiming “security” concerns (funny, there are no reports of anyone picketing or shouting at them on the streets). I have attempted to verify a number of the claims they have made, there is no way to substantiate them, and many of their claims are demonstrably and provably false. The group is widely quoted by the New York media in many articles about the horses. The City of New York seems to have no knowledge of any such study that I can find.
The animal rights organizations – and the mayor and City Council – are united in their belief that the horses should never again be permitted to work and that work for all animals is cruel, a form of abuse. I’m eager for the inevitable debate about police horses, K-9 patrols, bomb-sniffing dogs, therapy and seeing-eye dogs. The people who are lobbying for the ban do not seem aware of the fact that horses on rescue farms or out on pasture often get ill – colic, infections, lameness, elements, predators, foundering – and that according to most vets, behavioral studies, and some of the Humane Society’s own studies and statistics, horses on rescue farms do not live nearly as long as most carriage horses or other working horses do.
The sad reality – as any animal lover or rescuer knows – is that just because a farm or preserve has the name “rescue” in it, there is no guarantee of a healthy or humane environment. Through no fault of their own, many rescue facilities – I have seen more than a few, as have so many of the people reading this – are notoriously crowded, under-funded, overwhelmed by old and sick animals. None of them are as closely supervised and monitored as the carriage horse stables in New York, few offer green grass for horses to graze on all day.
I want to be honest about how I feel, I think it is a tragedy for working animals – especially these horses – to be deprived of their rapidly dwindling opportunity to work and live among human beings. Don’t animal lovers want to be around animals, not send them a way? Banning work for these horses is not saving them, it is dooming them.
For animals like horses in the modern world, work equals survival, it is really as simple as that. When we no longer see them or need them in any way, they will go the way of so many other species and vanish from our world. There is plenty of precedents, too many. The new idea of animal rights for the horses is that they be taken from their stables and work and sentenced to ghettoized enclaves where they will vanish from public consciousness and have no relevance to our lives in order for people to feel good and morally superior to other people. I can’t imagine how this could be healthy for them, for us, for the magic they offer visitors and children, or for a city that values condos and trucks more than the animals who have shared our world throughout our history.
The truth is we don’t really know yet what will happen to these horses if their industry is banned. Anyone who says they can guarantee safe passage for them is not telling the truth. Until the City Council legislation is offered and made public, we will only have to guess. It seems the most honest and realistic prediction would be this: some will go to their owner’s farms, some will be sold to other carriage owners and drivers, some will be sold back to farms, some will be sent to slaughter. A few might even go to rescue farms, if you want to call them lucky.
One of the core ideas driving the animal rights groups and much of the rhetoric coming from the city’s politicians in pushing for the ban is the urban myth of the rescue farm, a sort of Disney World for big horses where they can romp like the horses in the John Ford movies and graze all day long and ride into beautiful sunsets. If you live in New York City, the appeal is obvious and understandable, since few people ever see animals or rescue farms. But it is still a myth. This Nirvana is not real, it will not be the fate or the sylvan future for these big, banned and very active horses.
The bottom line for me is the same as it was when I first encountered the issue. If this is really about the horses, if this is a good thing for the horses, than the lives of the horses have to be better, not worse, certain and clear, not cloudy, the first priority, not the last. I don’t see any evidence their lives will be safer, healthier or in any meaningful way improved, or that the people pushing for their removal are much concerned about what happens in the future, only a political and ideological victory now. The lives of the horses will be a crapshoot, an equine form of Russian Roulette, some might survive, others might not.
The first thing I ever wrote about the carriage horses seems more certain than I realized: many of the horses will be sacrificed in order to be saved from a life where they are prized, cared for, healthy and valued and live among people, their true partners on the earth if they might survive.
Those truly concerned with the horses welfare might consider new and more convenient stables, traffic-free lanes, as there for cyclists, space in the park for them to be outside. Wouldn’t those meet all of the concerns of people who say they no longer belong in New York?
Those ideas are not being discussed or considered. I suppose the real tragedy is not only what may happen to the horses, but what the very notion of what so many people believe animal rights really mean.
A number of people out there – bloggers — who have liked some of my photos have asked if there is any way they might have a shot at buying them, I I’ve decided – because of the weather, it is hard for some people to get to the reception tonight – to offer two of the photos in the show to bloggers only – signed and personalized. They cost $200 plus shipping – that could add $40 or $50 to the total cost for framed photos. People who are interested can call Scott Carrino at the Round House Cafe – 518 677- 2233 – and purchase them from him, if interested.
One is the Yellow Barn above, which a lot of people asked about another is Flo On The Rocker below. Both photos are printed on archival paper and mats and are framed. They are 16 by 20 inches. I’ll give the bloggers a couple of days to purchase them in case they are interested, and then release them for sale in the photo show. I think it’s only right to give the people who have been encouraging me a crack at the photos. We worked hard to make them affordable, doing a lot of the matting and framing work ourselves. We will just about break even on the costs. Maria has done this work professionally, I am discovering there is not much she can’t do. Anyway, they are available to bloggers only for a bit, one way you can participate in this very exciting show if you are so inclined. The show is called “Looking At Our World,” a collaboration between George Forss and me, and I can’t think of a better way to affirm my photography than to have it hang alongside George’s brilliant work.
Life is definitely intruding today, we are getting organized, one bit at a time. Got paths dug out to the feeders, Red is keeping things under control out there, we are moving a lot of firewood today, getting ready for tonight’s photo show. Life is full, keeps us focused, engaged, excited, it is a creative thing to handle this winter, it’s not over yet.
We are finding our own Northwest Passage, clearing paths to the farmhouse and the barn, maneuvering through ever growing mounds of snow and ice. Some snow and ice coming tonight, right around the time of the photo reception for George and I at the Round House Cafe, compared to previous weeks, doesn’t sound too bad, but anyone planning to come should check the weather and be cautious. It will be clear all day, getting messier around dusk.
This afternoon, we need to get a cord of wood into the shed before the rain and ice comes, our friend Jack Macmillan is coming over to help Maria and I dig our way out of Fort Bedlam.
