I want to share with you our feeling – mine and Maria’s – that Frieda is nearing the end of her time. She is becoming disoriented, her arthritis is keeping her in perpetual pain and other issues, and more significantly, her great and wonderful spirit is waning. I love Frieda very much, we have become quite attached to one another, but she is really Maria’s dog in the way that Red is my dog and decisions about Frieda and her life are Maria’s to make. My role is to support both of them in any way that I can.
Maria wrote about this in a beautiful essay about this on her blog today, My Old Dog. There is nothing imminent that is about to happen. But Frieda is fading and struggling and we see that her wonderful work and life with us may be coming to an end soon. Frieda is a great dog. I believe she came to the world to protect Maria and to safeguard her when she was in great need and fear. In part, she came to bring us together. She did all that she came to do.
Frieda and Maria are powerfully connected to one another, it has been a beautiful thing for me to see, another great chapter in our lives with dogs and animals. I have my own ideas about dogs and life, as some of you know. I believe Frieda, like Rose before her, is a spirit dog, she came to the world for a purpose, she will leave when that work is done, just as Rose did.
Maria has her own feelings about life and death, and she can and will speak for herself, but we are not far apart, as usual. Frieda’s life will never be a cause for sadness and lament for me, she is the most wonderful and brave creature, she not only guarded Maria and me and our farm so faithfully, she endured great hardship and survived with determination. She and Maria were meant to be with one another. A life to celebrate and honor.
Maria sees the spirit fading in Frieda, and so do I, the great and often silent dialogue between human beings and their dogs is ending between us and Frieda, she is withdrawing into herself. We know the signs, we have seen it before. Frieda might be with us for a few months or for a few weeks, it is not possible for us to know, and there are no urgent decisions that need to be made. When there are, Maria will make them with my unqualified love and support.
For us, this will not be a drama or an anguish but a celebration, we will love and care for this wonderful creature to the end. She not only protected Maria when she needed to be protected but she was instrumental in bringing the two of us together.
Spirit dogs come when they are needed, they leave when their work is done. It would be so wonderful if she made it through the Open House and to Christmas with us, it was on Christmas Day five years ago that I brought her into the farmhouse at the first Bedlam Farm for the first time, and she has been in front of our wood stoves and in our hearts and lives ever since.
We will share this experience with insofar as we are comfortable – this is Maria’s story to share – and I will thank you in advance for loving Frieda and remind you to remember, please, that we are not seeking advice or direction from the outside world and will not be posting daily updates. In sharing our lives, we are not surrendering them to others.
It is easy to get lost in my meadow, I did this morning as the sun rose over the hills and the wildflowers began to open up. It is a hidden and surreal place, a temple of sorts. I will be back in the morning.
Eva Hughes is a former carriage horse driver, and her husband is a carriage horse driver – it is her great wish for this work to remain in her family. Hughes – she is a valued friend of mine – has spent some good years of her life fighting for the carriage horses and their drivers to keep their jobs and stay in New York City. The struggle and it’s ugliness have weakened her and taken some of her health.
The other day, a supporter of the carriage horses named Randie Blumhagen forwarded a message to Eva that came to her personal message box on Facebook. The message was from a well-known animal rights activist named David Sobel who is working to ban the carriage horses in New York City.
It said: “Say goodbye to your days of exploiting animals for profit, asshole. You’ll be working at McDonalds again before u know it.”
Eva, who gets messages like this almost daily and has for years, checked to see where the message came from and found that Sobel had posted the messaged and then had blocked any reply. Eva posted the message on one of her Facebook pages and asked if anyone knew who Sobel was, and there was an almost ho-hum and very familar ritual: people checked Sobel out quickly, found out who he was, saw the kinds of profane and ugly messages he sends, and sort of yawned. Another day in the life of the carriage horse story, where the abuse of people in the name of loving animals is the ideology and practice of many of those who want them gone.
The message, said everyone, almost bemused, was not unusual, it was not a big deal, Eva sees worse on most days, and has for years. It was emblematic of the continuing and worsening cruelty that has marked the assault on the carriage trade for some years, and which has disgraced the mayor and his campaign to ban the horses and put their people out of work. To our shame, we have come to accept this level of cruelty, especially in the world of the New York carriage drivers, and we turn a blind eye to it even amidst all of this talk of cruelty and abuse to animals.
I have also received messages from David Sobel since I began writing about the horses, I told Eva I thought it was best not to reply, but Eva is a fierce warrior for her clan, I imagine she found a way to get a message to him, she has a fiery temper, I fear the damage confronting so much anger can do.
People of good will can disagree about the horses, I have good friends who do not believe they should be hauling carriages in New York and while I don’t see it their way, I respect them and the way they present and discuss their ideas. They are often open to a different truth, as I hope I am. Some change their minds. I thought about Sobel’s message, both it’s cruelty and blatant elitism – another hallmark of this issue in New York. The carriage drivers, who have been called thieves, murderers, cheats, abusers and “random people” by the head of NYClass, the group spearheading the carriage ban, can go cook burgers when they are driven from their lives and their work.
Small wonder the mayor cannot find the heart or time to speak with them. “Random people” do not often get a mayor’s time, or his ear. The mayor’s spokespeople say they are seeking to find jobs for the carriage drivers, but they won’t deign to speak to them about what those jobs might be or whether they might want to do them.
___
The carriage horse affair has touched the hearts of many people in and outside of New York City, some who care about the horses, others about the people and great symbolism and meaning of the story.
Martin Luther King, Jr. would have grasped it’s importance. “The ultimate tragedy,” he said, ” is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
And that is the ultimate tragedy of the New York Carriage Horses, the very thing they are calling to me – to us – to see and understand. It is the real significance of this story, beyond the horses, beyond the drivers, behind the David Sobel’s of the world who are a tragedy unto themselves. There is a civic tragedy here as well, these are the people the mayor of New York has chosen to believe and align himself with, so publicly and completely. That is a profoundly sad thing.
I wish to be one of the good people if I can. The horses have called on me to speak up for them and for the people who live and work with them. The cruelty and injustice of this campaign have stirred the conscience and consciousness of many good people all over the country – I hear from them every day. And they have become a new social movement unto themselves. Good things will come of this painful conflict, as they do of almost everything.
All cruelty comes from weakness and ignorance, cruelty cannot ever ultimately succeed.
__
We love animals, and we love the people who own them and keep them in the world and treat them well.
We reject cruelty, against animals and against people.
We believe that animals can only be spoken for by people who know and love them and who wish to keep them active and relevant in our fragmenting world. The horses are keepers of the magic.
We believe the horses are the sacred children of Mother Earth, they have always walked with us through the joy and travails of life. We need them to stay among us and to be seen by our children, lest they be forgotten and vanish and take the wind and rain with them.
We do not believe it is possible to love animals and to hate people.
We believe the relationship between people and their animals is sacred, a bond not to be violated or broken without cause or process.
We believe the carriage drivers – and people everywhere who live and work with animals – are entitled to their dignity, their work, their property and their peace of mind.
We believe the most fundamental right of animals is to survive and be provided for in our urbanizing and pressured world.
__
Eva Hughes could not answer David Sobel because he posted his ugly message and quickly ran to hide, but I can answer him here, it is not good to be silent in the face of the oppression and cruelty that the carriage drivers face:
David Sobel, the horses will not be driven from the city, not now and in this way, David, good people everywhere are awakening to their plight and speaking on their behalf and for the truth: these are not the animals that need rescue, these are not the people who abuse animals. Their voices are being heard. In New York, survey after survey finds there is not one racial, ethic, age or gender group or borough that supports the ban on the carriage horses. Eva Hughes and her clan will not be working in McDonald’s, either, although many good and hard-working people do. Somewhere in this world, in New York City or elsewhere, they will be living and working with their horses, as they and their people have done for so many years.
It is cruelty and cowardice that has to fail, and will be forgotten and dismissed.
Some people live in a world of warnings and alarms – whatever is around the corner might be dangerous, watch out for it. Others see corners as a window, a door, an opportunity. This week I have been getting up very early to walk, and once again, I am discovering the sweet light of the early morning, there is no light like it. It reminds me that just around the corner is life, crisis, mystery, hope and sadness. The tapestry that adds up to being a human being. I never know what is around the corner, I cannot wait to find out.
