Even the mail carriers stop working in powerful storms like this one, but border collies are the new Pony Express, in a way. Nothing keeps them from their work, Red does not ever seen to notice the weather, he works in the rain, cold, snow, heat, day or night.
Earlier this week, I posted some questions for the mayor, should he ever decide to meet with the carriage driver or answer questions about his holy war against the carriage trade, or should any enterprising reporter in New York leave their computers and go outside. I saved one question, because it is a bit longer than the others and I believe it has special significance for animal lovers and those seeking to understand the carriage horse controversy.
This question is for the mayor and for the many people who have written me this year to tell me that they believe it is cruel for working horses to pull carriages in Central Park.
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Mr. Mayor, are you aware that in the past five years, nearly 25,000 people have called the police or city authorities in New York City to report animal abuse or cruelty. In 2013 alone, there were more than 4,000 such calls, and the New York Police Department has made 200 arrests in the last six months of people charged with animal cruelty and abuse.
Last January, the Police Department took over responsibility for animal abuse complaints from the S.P.C.A, and created an Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad. Arrests for animal abuse increased about 250 percent through September, compared with the same period last year.
Although the police do not break down the exact nature of each call, officials say almost every call involved a dog or a cat. Pit Bulls in particular, suffered the most grievous cruelty and abuse. In Brooklyn one, was set on fire, in the Bronx a Pit Bull was thrown from a balcony 20 stories high. Dogs have been found on the bottom of elevator shafts, thrown into the Hudson and East Rivers, shot in alleys and left to die, stabbed to death, tossed onto electrified subway rails and starved and beaten brutally, killed in religious sacrifices, dog-fighting contests, abandoned on city streets, poisoned, run over and left to starve. Hundreds of dogs and cats are hit by cars, buses, trucks and taxis in New York.
In one well-publicized case, a cat was kicked more than 20 feet, the act recorded on video.
Of those 20,000 calls to 911 or 311, the two primary numbers for reporting abuse in the city, none, say the police, involved a carriage horse, or was made by any person reporting the abuse of a carriage horse. No carriage horse has ever been killed by cruelty or abuse, according to police and city, health department and veterinary records (several have been injured or killed in accidents over a 30-year time frame).
Sir, you have made a dozen statements about the need to remove the horses from New York, claiming the carriage trade is both abusive and immoral. You have made no public statements about the awful abuse known to be inflicted on dogs and cats in particular. Your supporters in NYClass, the animal rights group spearheading the effort to ban the carriage horses and a major supporter of and contributor to your mayoral campaign, have made countless public statements, and held at least a score of public rallies and press conferences in recent months demanding the ban of the carriage horses.
They have not held a single press conference or rally to demand an end to the epidemic abuse of dogs and other animals in New York City, or to propose any new programs for reducing abuse and cruelty. Neither have you.
Last year, the New York City Council unanimously passed an Orwellian ordinance requiring anyone convicted of animal abuse to register for life with the city on an animal abuse registry, open to public inspection. The legislation also bars anyone who has been convicted of an animal abuse crime from owning or living with an animal. Those who don’t register themselves to the list, or violate the ban, could be charged with a misdemeanor and face up to a year in prison.
It was the kind of easy gesture politicians love, but which doesn’t help animals much, or the people who struggle to own and live with them and care for them.
There are plenty of photos of dead and injured horses on the NYClass website, many from places outside of New York. There are none of the more than 20,000 animals – probably many more unreported – that have been injured or abused in New York
What kind of animal rights philosophy is it, Mr. Mayor, that singles out animals who are not, according to every authority and official involved in their care, abused in any way, yet ignores the many thousands of documented cases of animals that are? Given your own criteria of abuse and immorality, it would seem that dogs are far less suited for life with many people in New York City than horses. I bet you do not want to go there.
Perhaps you miss the point of the lives of dogs in New York. Although there are many risks and problems that come with having animals like dogs living in a city, New Yorkers have chosen to have these animals in their lives, most are quite well cared for and valued. Dogs often come to harm in New York, they give and receive much love and succor. It is a trade-off New Yorkers have the right to choose, and have chosen. Many people have made it work for dogs in New York, countless dogs have great lives there and do much good.
The carriage trade seeks to make the same choice. There is always some risk of accident or mishap with animals like horses or dogs or mounted police or seeing-eye dogs, but the horses give love and joy to countless people every day. The carriage trade people have managed it well. Yet you insist the work of the horses alone are immoral. Can you explain that?
On it’s website, the city of New York defines animal abuse in this way:
“The New York Police Department investigates reports of animal abuse or neglect. New York State law defines animal cruelty as a situation where a person causes unjustified harm, pain, or suffering to an animal or neglects an animal’s care by not providing it with proper food, water, medical care, or suitable shelter.”
There is no documented or proven case in New York in modern memory or record where a carriage horse was denied proper food, water, medical care, or suitable shelter. Last December, a driver was cited for working a horse with thrush, a foot infection, and his carriage license was revoked. The horse, who was treated, was given five weeks of vacation and is healthy and working today. Beyond that, no carriage driver has been accused or convicted of inflicting pain on a carriage horse.
Sir, almost everyone – even many people who do not feel that horses should be living and working in New York City – believes there is something wrong with the selective and disproportionate fervor – and seeming hypocrisy – that marks the way in which you are pursuing the horses and the more than 300 whose lives revolve around them.
If you are sincerely concerned with animal abuse, why not work to reduce the extraordinary number of real abuse cases reported to the police each year, rather than focus your campaign on the one group of animals that is well-treated, safe and healthy? (and intensely regulated)
Why affiliate yourself so closely with animal rights organizations that seem much more interested in fund-raising and political influence than with helping or caring for the many thousands of animals, in New York City and elsewhere that are desperately in need of rescue and assistance – including the 155,000 horses who will go to slaughter this year in Mexico and Canada because there is no room for them on the horse rescue farms you say have plenty of room for the carriage horses?
Are you aware, Mr. Mayor, that thousands of those horses would be alive today if NYClass took the more than $3 million they have spent on trying to ban the horses and given it to those rescue farms starving for money and support? That might be a good cause for you, as a newcomer to the animal world (you say that you have never owned even a dog or a cat.)
Your comments on the ban are disturbingly vague, mumbling and incoherent – Inspector Clouseau, not Albert Schweitzer. You speak often of conviction in your public work, yet you seem to struggle to find a convincing rationale for your increasingly and inexplicably cruel campaign against the carriage trade, most recently demonstrated by proposing your ban several weeks before Christmas.
This ban makes no sense, it is nonsense, as the New York Times editorialized earlier this week. Do you understand why so many people believe there must be some ulterior motive – like real estate money – for your single-minded and increasingly irrational determination to ban the carriage trade?
Can you tell us why they are wrong?
