I was on the phone this morning talking to one of the New York Carriage Horse Drivers – I am going to New York next Thursday to spend the day with Stephen Malone, a carriage driver and leader of the fight to keep the carriage horses in New York. He was very gracious about my writings about the horses – I’m going to have lunch with his mother Jean and his father Paddy, a legend in the horse carriage trade – and we were talking about working animals. Stephen is open and honest and is struggling to understand this idea that work for animals is cruel.
Yesterday I saw one of the animal rights spokespeople quoted as saying the carriage horse work is unnatural, and the horses needed to be returned to nature. I thought about the phone call and the quote as I took Red out to work the sheep this morning. The horses remind me a bit of Red when I see them, they get excited when it is time to go to work, their ears and tails go up, they do a bit of a dance, they eagerly leave the stalls and head down the ramps and out into the world.
Working animals touch our hearts and imaginations in so many ways, but most people are too disconnected from the natural world now to make the connection between what stirs their souls and the carriage horses. They love to see border collies herding sheep. They are touched by the great and deepening work therapy dogs are doing in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice units and veterans facilities. They watch the disciplined and devoted seeing eye dogs help their humans navigate the world and they devour stories about search and rescue dogs, bomb-sniffing dogs and animal athletes at agility and show trials.
Yet they struggle to understand this is precisely what the New York carriage horses do, and they do it in the context of their history, breeding and rich work with human beings. For these horses, this is their natural world, they are in it, they do not need rescue from it, we do not need to be separated from them. Stephen told me in the last month or so, he has been nearly overwhelmed by the support he is receiving from the people of New York, from taxi drivers, tourists, shoppers on the street, commuters going to work, runners in the park, bicyclists driving by.
“For so many years, they thought of us as a hindrance, but now, they want us to stay, they want us to be here.” Some of them do, a lot of them don’t, and many of those are in powerful positions. The carriage horses have a big fight on their hands, I am eager to get back to New York and talk to Stephen Malone and his parents, Paddy and Jean and take some more photos.
I dedicate this blog post and Red’s work to the carriage horses, working animals live in solidarity with one another. They are not alien creatures, different from Red. People love Red, they are in awe of his work and focus, the job of animal lovers is to help people see that the horses and Red are one. They are citizens of the same nation, they are the same thing, they are as beautiful and worthy and important as he is. Our job is to make their lives with us safe and meaningful, not to patronize them and send them away.