Carried away (I'm so punny!)

Let’s put aside our holiday stress for a moment and think about an oft-overlooked holiday tradition in many major cities, and especially here in New York: carriage horses. The ones in Central Park are a year-round tourist attraction, but at the holidays they’re done up in their drivers’ finest, with garlands and tinsel strewn about on the carriages they pull families of tourists around in. I’ve been hearing rumblings lately about these horses, comments from New Yorkers packed onto the crowded sidewalks with tourists on Central Park South: “Those poor horses. Out in the cold like this!” and: “It’s cruel what they do to those animals!” And so on.

I don’t claim to be some kind of expert on animal psychology, nor do I know much about the living conditions of these animals when they’re not in the park pulling carriages, but I do know a decent bit about horses and what they like. Actually, I love horses. I’m one of those annoying semi-priveleged girls that got to take riding lessons when she was younger and now gets all giggly and big-eyed every time she sees one. I think they’re fantastic.

But that does not mean that I have any illusions, like many others do, about horses. They are not some sort of sparkly fairy creature that will die in captivity. They are not magical unicorns. If you’ve spent any time around them, you know what I mean, and if you don’t, please, please, just listen. This may be tough on anyone who grew up reading Black Beauty or playing with My Little Ponies or even who saw Seabiscuit, but it’s true.

Horses are big, strong, smelly animals. They poop a lot, and they roll around in it, and in dirt, and they stink. They have big brown eyes and long eyelashes, but they are also very willing to bite and kick if they’re in a bad mood. They are beautiful and graceful, but they are also gigantic animals that can weight over a ton. They have been bred for thousands of years to be big and strong enough to carry people and things on their backs, or to pull them behind them. Pulling carriages is literally what most of the horses in Central Park were born to do. In fact, most draft horses can pull up to six times their own body weight easily; it hardly bears mentioning that the carriages in question, even laden with whole tourist families, don’t weigh nearly six times a 1600 lb horse.

PETA (http://www.peta.org/MC/factsheet_display.asp?ID=135), that ever-screeching bastion of wisdom about the animal kingdom, is running a campaign right now against the “abuse” of the carriage horses, maintaining that the animals live miserable lives in terrible conditions and should be taken off the streets. While I appreciate their compassion, I want to point out to each and every one of them that it’s extremely misguided. These horses were born and bred to work, and while I’m sure there are parts of their lives that are less than ideal, that is true of every living thing. While it would be great if all horses could run free in meadows full of daisies, there just aren’t that many meadow-filled daisies these days, and very few people who can afford to support horses who don’t work for a living.

PETA insists that carriage horses will “inevitably” have hoof problems leading to lameness after walking on pavement. While it’s true that they are not meant – biologically – to be treading on paved streets most of their lives, these horses are cared for by professional ferriers who outfit them with specialized shoes to protect their feet as much as possible. PETA also argues that the horses suffer from breathing car exhaust, which I can’t deny, but I beg PETA to remember that so do all of us humans, and we’re doing all right. They maintain that the stalls the horses sleep in are “restricting” and small, but I feel compelled to inquire whether any PETA member has ever been in any other horse barn. Certainly some racehorses live in giant stalls like kings, but the majority of the world’s horses spend their indoor hours in small stalls where they can turn around and take a few steps, but not much more. “And,” PETA members cry, “the horse stalls are dirty! The animals are stepping in their own feces! It’s despicable!” To which I answer, once again: Horses are animals. They poop freely whenever and wherever they want to, including in their bedding. If you are in a horse stall, no matter how big or small or dingy or clean, there is at least a 50% chance that there will be manure in it, and the horse will not be offended in the slightest. It’s a horse.

And therein lies my entire argument. “It’s a horse.” I love horses, as I’ve said before, and of course I want them to have happy and enriching lives, but pretending that they are immaculate, highly intelligent, pseudo-human creatures that somehow need to roam free in fields of grain helps no one. In fact, it just feeds further into the already existing metropolitan ignorance about animals, which in turn leads truly cruel behavior toward our four-legged friends. For instance, I’m sure I’m not the only who has seen Manhattanites pushing dogs around in strollers rather than letting them walk. Taking a dog for a walk does not mean pushing it, people. It means letting the dog walk, because it’s a dog and it needs exercise to be happy and healthy. And even many of the dogs I see walking are wearing fur coats and booties! I’ve read articles on people who spend tens of thousands of dollars getting their cats spray-painted (http://www.whypaintcats.com/). There are rumors that this is a hoax, but the idea has been planted and I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts happening in reality. We’ve all heard stories or known someone who knew someone who had a pet pig that they kept inside in a diaper and fed beer. Or seen specials on people who keep chickens in thousand-dollar houses and take them swimming. The list of atrocious behavior toward animals goes on and on, mostly because people refuse to see animals for what they are: animals, that do not want to be treated like people.

From all I have seen personally, the carriage horses in Central Park want to be treated like horses, and they are treated fairly well as such. They are taken back to the stables to rest when the weather is too extremely hot or cold, are fed several times a day, and are rested for long periods of time. They get adequate exercise, are madly adored by children on the street who feed them treats, and have the company of other horses most of the time. I have never once seen a driver use his whip to urge a horse on, mostly because the horses have walked the route a thousand times and know exactly what they’re doing. Most of them are well-tempered horses who are used to the sights and sounds of the city, although there have been a few incidents of horses spooking at car horns and such and hurting themselves; one did, in fact, die this way a few years ago. And there have also been cases of horses being dehydrated during the hot summer months, but measures have been taken since then to provide them with better access to water.

If we allow PETA to brainwash us into thinking that because what carriage horses do looks less than appealing to us as people it must be wrong, we will only be adding to a culture of ignorance about our fellow creatures. Just because we don’t want to pull carriages and eat oats out of a bucket does not mean that it’s not a perfectly suitable thing for a horse to do. I’m sure there are aspects of their lives that could use improving, and I hope very much that, if nothing else, PETA’s public outcry will push the carriage horse industry to improve all conditions for the horses as much as they can. But shutting them down because we think we know what’s best isn’t going to help anything; it will only put a lot of good horses out of a job and probably out of a good home.