Simon is filthy these days, too much mud, ice and manure. Maria brushes him faithfully every morning. Grooming is a powerful way to communicate with many animals, especially equines. This is one of the things they love about people, and it breeds trust and connection in them, in us. Simon always presents himself for grooming, even when the hay is out for him. It is always a beautiful thing to see, as is Red on patrol, keeping our world in order. I took Red to the dentist this morning, he charmed all of the dental technicians, of course and lay down and dozed on the floor while my teeth were being cleaned.
Today Spring arrives officially, there is no sign of at Bedlam Farm, we were hit by an ice storm last night, another tonight and frigid weather coming on Sunday. Winter is proving itself to be worthy and determined. I did find one sign of Spring today, in one of the magical windowsill galleries that my creative wife conjures up, I am always surprised when I look out the window. Here in a bowl with a plant is a small donkey, waiting for Spring like the rest of us.
I think of Platero, the donkey from the Andalusians, and the patient observations of his poet companion, Nobel laureate Juan Jiminez. Be patient, Platero, be patient, Spring is taking it’s time to get here, it is coming, it will be here soon.
Everything has it’s purpose, and I believe one of the purposes of the Carriage Horse controversy in New York City is to teach the people in the modern world what animals like horses are really like. To get to understand them, rather than simply pity them.
When I began writing about the carriages horses five or six weeks ago, I felt their cause was hopeless. The mayor, the City Council President, the City Council, a coalition of millionaire-funded animal rights groups, hovering real estate developers seeking the stable properties, and a long media and Internet campaign offering horror stories of abuse and wrenching images of dying and crippled horses – all of that seemed to add up to a lost and insurmountable struggle.
In his inaugural speech the mayor promised to ban the horses within a week of taking office, he said it was a certain thing and his major priority. Public opinion was either indifferent or hostile to the horses – we have all been weaned on these horse horror stories and awful photos for years.There was a general perception among the public – including me – that the horses were overworked, dropping dead or being killed by traffic accidents all over the city, beat up, sick and poorly cared for by callous and greedy owners and drivers. Twelve weeks later, the horses are coming into their own, but not in the way the mayor planned.
NYClass, the organization spearheading the horse ban, proudly showed off the vintage electric cars the organization spent $450,000 researching and building prototypes for (wow, that would have saved a few hundred horses from slaughter). The group said the soon-to-be-unemployed carriage horse drivers would all be reassigned to drive the electric cars, whether they wanted to or not (nobody has asked them) and there would be no loss of work or employment.
In just a few weeks, the carriage horse controversy has changed. The odds are still long for the carriage trade but not as long as they were. Polls show that by a margin of 3 to 1, New Yorkers want the carriage horses to remain. More than 75 per cent of Manhattan businesses oppose the ban, and every major labor union in the city has asked the mayor to leave the horses alone. A report by Newsday yesterday found that support for the ban in the City Council was crumbling, that it was no longer certain the mayor could pass the ban. Reporters said yesterday that proponents of the ban were scrambling to introduce legislation into the City Council as early as this week, before opposition to the ban could grow any more.
It seems clear now that the fate of the horses will ultimately be decided in court, the mayor seems unwilling to engage in any kind of genuine dialogue about it. He and the animal rights groups seem to be living in their own reality. The mayor is either a committed supporter of the very politicized animal rights movement in New York, or is, as some claim, completely beholden to the people in the animal rights movement who supported his mayoral campaign
What happened in these short weeks? I’ve talked to a number of reporters, a lawyer and politician or two, and been following the relevant blogs and media reports closely. I think what happened is that the carriage horse trade decided to fight back, to create their own meme, their own story, their own narrative. Christina Hansen, who describes herself as a “free-lance horse advocate,” came to New York to begin organizing a media campaign in defense of the trade. Hansen, a former history professor and a passionate horse lover, along with Steven Malone, a carriage owner and Eva Hughes, a former driver and ferocious advocate for the horse trade, began their own counteroffensive – talking to reporters, answering charges, challenging untruths, posting messages on websites, offering a different story. Abusers don’t generally come out in public and defend themselves and invite people into their homes and workplaces, it made a difference. For the first time, the idea that the horses are being abused was being challenged.
For years, the carriage trade has been portrayed as greedy and callous abusers, both in the media and especially online, the new birthplace of the unchecked fact. The horses are always portrayed as piteous and suffering, and the industry’s responses were rarely heard or sought. The carriage trade is not media savvy, they were slow to grasp the growing centrality of social media and the Internet in their lives, they were understandably much on the defensive.
It was a smart campaign Hansen and her group began, they chose to be transparent, they opened the stables up to the press and the public, they showed they had nothing to hide, they began attracting reporters and people – I was one of them – who were willing to take a look for themselves and compare what they were seeing with that the animal rights organizations were claiming. There was simply no evidence to support the claim that the horses were being abused or were suffering. Scores of people have taken a look, journalists, veterinarians, city residents, they have all reached the same conclusion: the horses are well cared for, there is simply no factual evidence of chronic abuse.
Around the country, horse and animal lovers have mobilized in protest and outrage against the notion that work for working animals is cruel, or that draft and working horses wanted or needed to be on pasture eating grass rather than working among people. Or that these animals could only live on the farms of wealthy people or in rescue preserves. Social media cuts both ways, it can spread allegation and misinformation, it can also counter them. It is hard to respond to wrenching images of the small number of horses who were injured in New York. Most of the media in New York seemed indifferent to the story, it just didn’t seem urgent or important to them. Most New Yorkers have nothing to do with the horses, and saw them as some sort of tourist gimmick.
The big breakthrough – one I witnessed – came from Liam Neeson’s appearance at the Clinton Park stables two Sundays ago. The famous actor brought a reasoned and credible presence to the controversy. He did not attack anyone or seem strident or angry, a marked counterpoint to the sometimes rabidly angry animal rights organizers and websites. It was a pitch perfect performance, he called attention to the mayor’s puzzling and politically inept refusal to see the horses or talk to their owners or riders. Why, after all, would Neeson stick his neck out that far if he wasn’t sure? It just didn’t look good for a mayor to be saying the industry had to be banished and hundreds of people put out of work, but that he wasn’t willing to even discuss it. I don’t know what the mayor’s motives are – I have seen no concrete evidence that he is acting out of real estate interests – but he has permitted himself to appear as if he had simply been bought by the animal rights groups, he seems utterly inarticulate on the subject of the horses.
Neeson pointed out that he had been around horses his whole life, and walked in Central Park every day. The horses were healthy and content and much appreciated there, he said. Neeson drew attention to the fact that it is quite simple to tell whether animals are abused or not, there are many signs of it. The motto of NYClass, the flagship animal rights organization fighting to ban the horses is “Stop Horse Abuse,” it is the most prominent thing on their website. But this suddenly seemed shallow, a reminder of the distortion of the truth, not the truth. If the horses are being abused – that is a crime – why isn’t anyone being arrested?
Neeson was one of the few principals in the public discussion who seemed to understand horses and their needs, it was a bravura performance. More than 100 journalists came to see Neeson, many more than had visited the stables in all the years of the controversy. Neeson had a big bully pulpit and he used it effectively, it seemed to turn the tide of public opinion. Finally people were paying attention and they could draw their own conclusions. In addition to defending the care of the horses, Neeson drew attention to the human beings that would lose their livelihoods, their horses, their way of life if the ban was passed. Suddenly, the story was everywhere, and the story stopped being an endless and often manipulative ideological and political argument but a very human story, one people could relate to, even if they didn’t care about horses. It was no longer about some faceless demons, but the sons and daughters of mostly Irish immigrants to came to American to build lives for their families, and are doing it still.
The dynamic changed almost overnight, and it was Neeson who changed it, I think. It became apparent that neither the mayor nor the animal rights groups knew anything about horses, they kept saying the most transparently ignorant things about them. Their opposition to them seemed almost purely ideological, even myopic. It seemed that these groups and the mayor had been living in their own hermetically sealed bubble and once they came out of the bubble and into the wider world, their righteous campaign, based mostly on fantasies about how animals ought to live, seemed to just disintegrate. Their expensive fake vintage electric cars have been widely ridiculed, and do, in fact, appear ridiculous, a dreadful and symbolic trade for these beautiful and iconic animals.
The response of the animal rights groups to the fierce opposition to the ban has been weak – and inept. Nobody would be out of work, they said, the drivers could drive their carts, as if horses and carts were indistinguishable from one another. After Neeson’s stable appearance, they put up photos all over social media showing men with kittens and dogs and signs that read “Real Men Have Compassion For Animals,” underscoring Neeson’s claim that they had no compassion for people.
Abuse has been the main argument for these groups seeking to ban the horses for years, but in the light of much public scrutiny, that argument has seemed to collapse. No one is claiming the horses are abused anymore. Nor is there any evidence to show they are unhealthy or in nearly as much danger from traffic as human beings, or in much danger at all. Three horses have been killed or euthanized as the result of traffic accidents in the past 30 years. The major argument now has devolved down to the idea that the horses simply don’t belong in New York any longer and hardly anyone in New York outside of the mayor’s circle seems to believe it or agree. What a potentially great victory for animals, this affirmation that so many New Yorkers want to keep them in their city.
Beyond that, the gift and message of the horses seems to be penetrating that tough and sophisticated city. It is not cruel for working horses to work, quite the contrary, it is both healthy and necessary. The people in the carriage trade ought not be forced out of business and work by an arbitrary government that refuses to even speak to them. Working horses have never lived in nature, in the wild, and would not survive long there. Very few horses live on grass, there is no wild for them to live in. It is false to suggest all of the horses can be guaranteed safe and healthy lives on rescue preserves, there are few places where horses of that size can be sustained. Many would certainly end up being slaughtered in order to be “saved,” no one can guarantee otherwise. Working animals survive with people, most large animals without work do not. It is no service to the horses to take them out of the secure and regulated lives and throw them out into the holocaust now killing 155,000 horses a year.
I have no idea what the mayor of the city’s politicians will ultimately do or what the fate of the horses will be. The challenge to them is very powerful and very serious. But this poignant drama could be good news for the horses and for animals everywhere if the controversy surrounding continues to focus on what animals are really like, and how we can ensure that they remain safely and meaningfully among us. That is the very discussion we need to be having, not a false and raging debate about imaginary cruelty.
Almost before our eyes, New Yorkers are learning what animals are really alike, how adaptable and eager to be among humans they are, how the carriage horses are among the most fortunate animals on the earth. They get to live with us in our greatest city, be well fed and sheltered and be seen and loved and known by human beings – the most critical element of survival for animals in our world.
I believe this is the message of the horses, that they are not only not piteous and dependent creatures, they are strong and powerful and they have come to remind us that we need a new and more mystical understanding of animals in our world. They need us, but we need them more, and if all this pain and misery and argument leads to a more common understanding of this, it will all have been well worth it.
Simon is a curious donkey, he is very protective of the sheep, he tried to stomp and bite Red for months after Red came, he didn’t want him anywhere around him, but the two have worked it out and now I think Simon wants to learn how to herd sheep, he stands right next to Red, lowers his head and gives the sheep the eye, the way Red does.
This is in the category of animals doing things we will never quite understand, but I think Simon thinks he can herd sheep and is trying to learn. Red seems quite comfortable working with him.
