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14 years ago
A Horse of a Different Color: Carriage Horses Are Neither War Horses Nor Work Horses
Horses have always been the innocent victims – whether taken to war without a choice and worked to death; or used in rodeos, horse racing or New York City’s inhumane horse-drawn carriage industry.
Sad history – In the age before the automobile, horses were notoriously overworked, and many died in the streets. In NYC, they pulled wagons loaded with people and goods, and they served as the power for the City’s street trolley system. Between 100,000 and 200,000 horses lived in the city at the turn of the century. Many were literally worked to death — their carcasses left on the street waiting for the street cleaners. From an article by Joel A. Tarr in American Heritage Magazine – Urban Pollution – many long years ago “The average streetcar nag had a life expectancy of barely two years, and it was a common sight to see drivers and teamsters savagely lashing their overburdened animals. The mistreatment of city horses was a key factor in moving Henry Bergh to found the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866.”
Steven Spielberg’s film War Horse gave me new insight into what the term “work horse” and “war horse” really meant. During World War I, horses were transported via rail to New York City to be shipped to Europe for use in the war. They pulled cannons, trucks and ambulances and were literally worked till they dropped in the ravages of war and hand-to-hand combat. Hundreds of thousands of horses did not make it out alive, dying from artillery fire, starvation and disease. With the end of the war, and with increased mechanization in the 20th century, the need for draft horses declined. Many of these horses were sold to slaughter.
Humans had contributed to the overpopulation of draft horses by over breeding, cross breeding and selective breeding. Mules are man made – the hybrid offspring of a female horse and a male donkey. So are hinnies – a combination of a male horse and female donkey. A 2008 article from Horseman Magazine says “Most draft horses however were really the result of selective breeding. Programs for breeding were primarily set up to produce these large, muscular and powerful horses.”
Watching “War Horse” provided a window into the ways our society has treated horses through the years. Horses were domesticated by humans who needed their strength to perform a variety of duties that they were unable to do. And horses, being the docile animals that they are, complied. They became known as “beasts of burden” as if this and nothing else described what they were.
Our use of horses over the millenia is nothing to be proud of – the devastation of war; the exploitation of animals – but people felt they had no choice. Real work needed to be done, and powerful horses were available and capable. Today, we don’t need to use horses to work for us. We have a choice, and can and must choose not to exploit them.
Where do they go? – Among the most abused work horses today are those who pull carriages with tourists in major urban areas like New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston, Atlanta and Rome. In New York, these horses are forced to haul tourists through the congested streets of midtown. When no longer able to do this pulling, they are removed from the business. Unconfirmed rumors abound concerning their engraved hoof identification numbers being sanded off so they can’t be identified as a NYC carriage horse when they are in the auction kill pen. Freedom of Information requests from the Department of Health reveal a very high turnover of carriage horses – between 60 and 70 a year – about 1/3 of the total horses. Auctions are the likely place to sell them and recoup costs. When a horse is sold outside the City, as most are, records are not required to be sent to the Department of Health – only eventual notification that the horse is no longer in the system so the driver does not have to pay the license fee. Although the industry has taken advantage of the NYC landscape to ply their trade, the drivers are not accountable for where the horses go, and the City has never seen fit to change that, despite pleas from advocates who believe they deserve a humane retirement. There is no transparency in this trade although they benefit from it being a cash only business with few meaningful restrictions.
It has long been suspected that many of these horses are “laundered” with the help of some Amish farmers who essentially act as middlemen. They will take the horse directly to auction so the blame for the horse ending up in the kill pen is not traced back to the carriage operator. A perfect example of how this played out was with Bobby II Freedom, a former NYC carriage horse jointly rescued by the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages and Equine Advocates in 2010. Every year more than 100,000 equines are transported from the US across the Mexican and Canadian borders where they are slaughtered for human consumption and shipped to in Europe and Japan.
The horse of a different color – The present day urban carriage horses are not work horses although the drivers like to pretend they are. That term needs to be reserved for horses who helped their owners survive before the industrial revolution. Instead, they are entertainment horses – they are horses of a different color. They are often decorated with feathered head dresses, some with glittered body paint and painted hoofs. Undignified – a tawdry decoration to attract tourists.
A work horse would pull a plough to till the earth so the farmer could plant seeds and feed his family. A carriage horse pulls unsuspecting tourists around a city to see the sights, and according to a recent article in the NY Post, they often get ripped off. These tourists don’t know about cruelty and safety issues, and the carriage drivers certainly aren’t informing them.
A typical day – By law, a NYC carriage horse may work a punishing nine hours a day, seven days a week. Throughout their long shifts, they are confined between the shafts of their carriage wearing heavy equipment, blinders and a metal bit in their mouths. During the holiday season, the horses are worked to exhaustion. The current law requires a 15 minute break every two hours, but it is not enforced. At other times customers are scarce, the horse stands on the hack line, often ignored by her driver whose attention is elsewhere. She is frequently bored, either mentally shutting down and appearing dispirited, or repeatedly pawing / pounding her hoof on the pavement. It is a form of displacement behavior on which the horse eventually becomes stereotyped. Restricted by the carriage, she has no freedom of movement. She is not even able to scratch an itch.
Laws not enforced – Although it is against the law in NYC for horses to be left untethered or unattended, it is a common practice. In 2007, a horse named Smoothie was attached to her empty carriage waiting unattended at Central Park South when she was spooked by a loud noise. Frantic, she bolted, got her legs tangled in the carriage and ended up crashing into a tree and dying. Another horse who saw Smoothie bolt also spooked and ran into traffic, crashing into a car.
On October 28, 2011, an unattended horse spooked on Central Park South near Columbus Circle, bolting into traffic and ending up in the park where he crashed into the wall. He is reported to no longer be in the business.
Carriage drivers like to characterize themselves as the experts, the “real horsemen”; this is a thinly veiled and polarizing tactic designed to suggest that anyone who wants to see this business come to an end in the large cities lacks knowledge. They take this line of reasoning even further, stating that proponents of a ban “know nothing about horses” and that the carriage horses–all horses, in fact–need a job. This, of course, is a human concept.
Having knowledge of horses does not equate with treating them well or knowing what is best for them. Michael Vick knew about dogs, and look how he treated them. When people make money off the back of a horse or any other animal, their first priority is invariably profit. One does not have to know a fetlock from the withers to know that enslaving these horses and shackling them to a carriage for hours on end is inhumane and is all about what the driver wants – not the horse.
Jobs or respect? As for needing a job – this is just an excuse to keep the horses working in the carriage business. Our focus is on urban, commercial / tourist carriage businesses in cities like New York – nothing else. Horses have highly developed social relationships and need mental and physical stimulation. They are exceedingly social animals and should have the opportunity to graze in a pasture in the company of other equines – something that is denied to them as a carriage horse.
New York City needs to move into the 21st century and stop pretending that this is a big tourist draw or that it provides lots of revenue to the city. It is not and it does not. Horse-drawn carriages pose a danger for the horses, their passengers, other vehicles and pedestrians.
It’s way past time to end this cruel and inhumane anachronism. We hope that time will come in the next few years with the passage of the Avella/Rosenthal bill to ban horse-drawn Carriages, which is currently in the New York State legislature.
Image Source r0sss/Flickr
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“We have a choice, and can and must choose not to exploit them.”
Amen.
Carriage and working horses are not “exploited” they are loved and well cared for. They are our partners and members of our extended families. You really don’t have any idea about most of us, and how we feel about our horses.I bet none of you posting anti-carriage horse stuff has ever bothered to have a rational onversation with any carriage driver. In the cities, all the anti-carriage horse people do is scream at us and our horses and passengers, stick phones and cameras in our faces and even curse at us.
There have been wild horses in this country since the first Spanish Conquistadors. They’ve lived wild for centuries, and to my knowledge were not bringing around a resume trying to get work. They were very happy being left alone with other horses from their herds, without human contact. If you see pictures of these horses in the wild, they look happy, even joyful. They look a far cry from the miserable carriage horses that line the streets around Central Park, with their heads hanging down, pathetically pounding their hooves on the pavement. The carriage industry uses the notion of “horses needing to work” as an excuse for exploiting these poor unfortunate creatures.
There have been FERAL horses in this country since the Spanish brought them over to the Western Hemisphere– FERAL– not “wild” horses. They often lead brutal and very short lives constantly on the move looking for forage and water. Constantly suffering in all kinds of weather and even dying from lightening strikes on the high exposed semi-desert mountiansides.
They are almost constantly jockying for position in the herd and for limited forage and water resources. The weakest of them are attacked and injured by the stronger. The ones who can’t keep up are left behind to become the prey of cougars, wolves and even coyotes.
Actually read some of the books on the feral horses, don’t just look at the photos! If horses could type, Since so many of the people posting here against carriage horse seem to like anthropomorphic images so much, Here is one:
If horses could type, the feral horses, you describe would be using their little hoofies to type out resume’s so they could get a nice cushy job as a carriage horse– anywhere.
Three meals a day, all the water and hay you can eat, shelter from the elements and preditors– and even protection from your own kind. Medical care, dentistry and hoof care included with nice baths and lots of grooming products, especially Mane N Tail to keep you coat shiny and bright and HEALTHY. Interesting work– only 9 hours a day, at a slow pace with plenty of time to rest and nap– standing up with one hoof cocked, of course, becase you ARE a horse.
No bossy mares biting and kicking you- no angry stallion trying to drive you off if you are male or herd you into his harem if you are female where he can impregnate you every year– even while your 9-day old foal is trying to nurse.
Or worse, where a rival stallion can take over another’s harem, by killing or injuring him severely enough to drive him off. And then kill, or injure and leave your foal for dead, so HE can impregnate you, and all the rest of the mares.
No rattlesnakes or vipers of any kind. No mountain lions, no wolves, no coyotes, no grizzly bears. No standing out ALL THE TIME in stormes and blizzards. No constantly being wary and on the move almost constantly, running from place to place because the lead mare got “spooked”and you can’t risk getting parted from the herd.
Yep, if horses could type, the NYC carriage stables and all the rest of the livery stables would be swamped with resume’s from fedal horses and probably a few Eventing, Jumping, Racing, Endurance and just bored weekend TRAIL horses.
You really are full of it.
Tess you are right. That is either Eva Hughes or Christine Hansen. This is their MO. If it is not, this is still worth saying. I do not know which one is more full of themselves, but it is direct competition. They pretend to know everything there is to know about everything and their followers believe them. Christine fancies herself a brilliant historian. There is a video on Youtube showing Christine speaking at their fund raiser. She is slurring her words i.e. drunk. She should be en embarrassment but the others do not know the difference.
At one point on the video she bragged (she does that all the time) about writing the press releases and said about Steve Malone who was standing next to her “you know the quotes attributed to him – well I wrote them.” I doubt Malone is smart enough to get the insult.
NO– Wrong– AGAIN– Martha M. I certainly am NOT Christina Hanson or Eva Hughes BUT I agree 100% with them. I believe the radical animal rights extremists and their followers, like you two, have targeted legitimate independent small business owners in NYC with a pack of LIES.
I believe you have waged a war of twisted words, lies, protests and misinformation designed to drive them out of business and confiscate their horses– of which the bill in the NY state assembly and Intro 86 in NYC are just your two latest attacks.
I believe some of you extremists are being aided and funded, in part, by a real estate mogul, who despite his protests to the contrary, is motivated MORE by hope of buying up the stables, than by his concern for the carriage horses’ welfare –IF you can get the carriages banned.
I believe that the NYC carriage horses are just the first target of you and others like you–radical extremists. I believe this because of what your own facebook page, that I quoted elsewhere, says.
I believe that these radical animal rights activists pose a real and present danger to every horse owner in this country– no matter what discipline they follow or what they do with their horses. I believe these radicals’ ultimate goal is to ban the use of horses by humans for ANY reason.
And I am NOT anyone other than Mrs. H.B. Willis. In addition to being an almost lifelog horsewoman, I actually am a journalist and a historian, with BAs in both mass communication and history from a university in Louisiana. I also hold two post-graduate degrees in education.
I started learning to ride with my father before I could walk well. I have ridden and driven for show and pleasure, and I was a horse breeder as well. Since 1999, I have operated a small not-for-profit horse retirement farm for six to eight horses at a time, with the help of friends and family.
As a fund raiser for the farm, I operate a special occasions carriage livery with earnings after expenses going 100% to care for the horses here. I became involved in carriage livery issues after I was attacked on several horse-related sites for operating a carriage livery, by what I can only surmise were animal rights extremists or very uninformed fellow horse owners involved in horse draft horse rescue and re-homing.
So how about you two- Tess and Martha M? Do you own any horses? Have you ever owned any horses? How about- have you ever ridden any horses. Ever laid eyes on any hores in real life other than the NYC carriage and police horses? Just wondering.
NOTE to Forel: was is past tense. I do not currently breed horses as you tried to claim in on other sites. Thus, I am not currently in the breeding business, and haven’t been since 1989.
I have a 16mm tape of feral wild horses around Sundre taken around 1970. In it, a group of coyotes eat a mare alive while she was lying down to give birth. Yes, horses can scream. That and starvation and lack of water are the joys found for the wild horse. Oh..did I mention they are also “target” practice for the city folks who like to experience nature with their SUV’s.
My goodness, Fairfax. Do you get off on the video? Why do you keep it. You are demented.
If working nine hours a day surrounded by motor vehicles isn’t bad enough for these horses, they aren’t even given the chance to graze and move freely on a pasture after they’ve worked in such a punishing environment. They fight rush hour traffic and go straight back to the small stalls on the 2nd and 3rd story of warehouses in Hell’s Kitchen. The tourists who take carriage rides are under the impression that the horses live in the park. If they knew the truth about their housing and how they live (and die), many would be just as angry as those of us who are trying to take these horses out of harm’s way.
The irony. Horses as transportation are the ultimate green powerhouse.
But finally the cat is out of the bag: Ban all use of horses.
Whether or not one likes carriage horses, the public must look deeper into the matter.
The people supporting the outright ban are not really interested in the horses’ welfare. To some they are a means of acquiring most valuable Manhattan real estate on which the horses are stalled, to the rest it is a means to topple the first domino in the war to separate humans from animals for good.
Actions like frightening little girls in toy stores are spearheaded by people with close ties to PETA, HSUS and ALF. people Who have stated time and time again that their goal is to end existence of domestic animals once and for all. That goes well past the Carriage horse in NYC: It includes your pet animals. Your cat, your dog, your pet bird. That includes service dogs for the disabled and therapeutic animals. No exceptions. Those are people who think nothing of committing crimes in the pursuit of their goals. Arson is just in a days work. There have been human casualties.
Yes, accidents happen. And when you deal with large animals the mishaps are bigger. However, the people around Ms Forel are known to actively get in the way of drivers aiding their horses. There is at least one well documented incident, filmed by no other than a Veterinarian of all things, while getting in the way of the driver.
The ASPCA is behind the ban of the carriage horses. They are also the agency in charge of overseeing the compliance with the rules and regulations, of which there are many. To put it bluntly, the fox is in charge of the hen house.
Donny, you continue to repeat statements you know are lies. You know nothing about horses, have never been in the stables (which are clean and well-kept) and refuse to accept a debate challenge from the carriage owners. Why is that? Because you know you’ll look like a fool?
Donny- I guess you FORGOT aobut the FIVE week MANDATORY annual vacations in the country AND the FACT that many carriage horse owenrs in NYC own more than one carriage horse and they actually rotate them in and out of service– and to the country nore often than the law requires– forgot about that, huh?
There are ONLY 68 carriages, but there are MORE than 200 licensed and active carriage horses- WHY? — so that the horses can be rotated out of the city and to the country when their owners think they need a vacation– not just when the law says they should have a vacation.
Who do we contact about getting a tour of the stables?
As someone who personally toured the stable Donny is referring to, it was absolutely fabulous! Donny has never seen it, and loves to speak from an uneducated standpoint. The horses have mandatory vacations outside of the city; many spend months at pasture. Don’t believe anything Donny says, he actually thought chestnuts were tumors.