I was startled Saturday to get a bunch of e-mail from people in New York City who were reading an early edition of the New York Daily News, which contained a full-page ad from the New York carriage trade thanking some of the thousands of people who rallied to their cause and helped refute the big lies: that the carriage horses were miserable and unhappy, yearning for green grass, overworked, underfed, out of place in a major city.
In the interests of full disclosure – I am big on openness – I should say that I was one of those thanked prominently in the ad, which you can see for yourself here. It said simply, “Thank You For Standing With Us.” The truth is, I want to thank them for standing up to people who lie and intimidate and care nothing for truth or facts.
The list of people and organizations being thanked was daunting and stirring, it easily gives the lie to the idea that the horses are suffering or being abused in any way. One by one, veterinarians, writers, reporters, horse lovers, equine rescue and veterinary groups came to the support of the carriage trade. The horses were examined countless of times, followed throughout the day and night, observed in Central Park and in their stables.
Again and again, the voluminous health records kept and monitored by five different New York City agencies were pored over and dissected. The horses did not suffer from breathing city fumes. They were not overworked, they were closely regulated in the heat and the cold.
They were, by farm, the safest form of transit operating anywhere in New York City. They lived long and healthy lives, showed no signs of trauma, abuse or depression. They are, said every veterinary equine agency, the luckiest and best-treated horses in the world. They are well fed, well sheltered, well-groomed and much-loved, both by their drivers and the many hundreds of people who love them and feed them and great them every in Central Park.
The defeat of the mayor’s blatantly corrupt effort to ban the horses was not only a great victory for the people of the carriage trade, and for the horses themselves, it was a victory for children, animal lovers, tourists and visitors to one of the world’s great parks, which was built, in great measure, for the horses themselves. They have much more of a claim to be there than the taxis and cars and pedicabs and bicyclists who flood the park every day.
Horses and people have worked together for many thousands of years, often in the most crowded and densely populated cities on the earth, cities far more dangerous for animals then present-day New York. A century ago, thousands of horses died in the city every month. They succumbed to rats and animal attacks, diseases spread by insects, were burned in countless stable fires, overworked, killed in collisions on unpaved, crowded and unpoliced streets.
In the past three decades, three horses have died in traffic accidents in New York City out of millions of rides. Hundreds of thousands of New York residents have been killed or injured in motor vehicle accidents during that time.
The mayor and the animal rights groups fighting to banish the horses demonstrated an almost total ignorance of the real lives and needs of horses. The big work horses have never lived in the wild, never lived on green pasture, are bred to work and be with human companions. The carriage horses have everything they need and want, and the people of New York City get to see them, touch them, understand something about them.
The carriage trade has scored a major victory on the fight to keep some rationality and truth in our understanding of animals. I began writing about them two years ago, and am writing about them still. I thank the carriage trade for helping me do that, with their openness, their honesty, and their courage. This fight is not over, but I am proud to stand with the carriage trade for as long as they are willing to fight.