Carriage Horse Facts

Normally, I don't like to respond to the drivel that gets posted on some of the anti-carriage-horse pages, because it simply gives a forum to absolute ignorance and usually is too ridiculous to address - you know, the ol' "That horse has a broken leg!" when the horse is merely cocking a hind leg to take a nap, or "That horse has a tumor/sore!" (pointing frantically at the horse's chestnut)

Well, I make an exception when this kind of ignorant posting by anti-carriage-horse people, hell-bent and hysterical in their efforts to find something, ANYTHING, wrong with the NYC carriage horses, causes ACTUAL harm and allows REAL cruelty and suffering to continue. Animals are DYING because of the anti-carriage-horse activists overzealous harassment of the carriage industry in NYC.

As you know, spring is slowly arriving - and with the warmer weather come the animal rights activists. This past Saturday, "activists" spent the afternoon waving around inflammatory posters and harassing the carriage drivers, trying to find the "abuse" that the activists are convinced exists everywhere. (Case in point - the leader of the group and another activist spent a long time murmuring how every napping carriage horse looked like they were "exhausted" and "about to pass out." You could tell they were just dying for a horse to fall down... Sorry, girls, the horses are FINE and you wouldn't know an "exhausted" horse if you saw one... because you haven't seen one on 59th St!)

One of the other things that happens at this time of year is that after a several months of work with full winter coats (whose hair protects the horses from the elements), some of the horses get rub marks where the harness causes the winter coat to break, and become shorter. Coupled with the regular shedding that occurs at this time of year as the summer coat is growing in, some horses have places where the harness contacts the horse that have noticeably shorter hair - sometimes of a different color, because the summer coat is lighter. This is normal and harmless, and is also found in horses who wear blankets this time of year, but the animal-rights activists are convinced that these are the result of "ill-fitting harness" and represent "abrasions" and "open sores" that cause the horse pain. 

So, the activists took a bunch of pictures of a few of these rub marks - which are the cosmetic and physical equivalent of taking clippers to an area of winter coat - and pictures of hoof brands and medallion numbers and sent a whole bunch of complaints to the ASPCA about the "abuse" and "cruelty" they had witnessed this weekend.

Now, believe it or not, the ASPCA absolutely follows up on every single complaint they receive, and because the higher up muckety-mucks in the organization are in bed with the real estate developers over at NYCLASS and are ideologically/politically opposed to the carriage industry despite having no evidence that there is anything wrong with the carriage horses, the ASPCA's HLE agents prioritized these complaints and showed up first thing Monday morning with not one, but TWO, ASPCA patrol vehicles and mountains of paperwork. 

They checked out the horses in question, talked to the drivers, looked under the harness, felt the rub marks... and guess what? THERE ARE NO OPEN SORES. THERE ARE NO ABRASIONS. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG. (And, by the way, all those horses that have "orthopedic problems" according to the activists? They're all sound. And the horses with "suspicious hoof brands" - they're all accounted for and correctly registered. )

Meanwhile, there is REAL suffering and cruelty going on in NYC. Dogs are being shredded in dog fights. All across the city people are not feeding their dogs and cats, not giving them veterinary treatment, and in some cases torturing their pets. 

But the ASPCA cannot do their job and go help these animals, because so-called "animal activists" who "love" animals soooooooooooo much are out filing frivolous and false reports.

Let me connect the dots for you - because the anti-carriage-horse folks scream and make noise and cause all kinds of grief for the ASPCA, the HLE agents have to come and waste their time and everyone else's checking up on fat, healthy, fit horses with all kinds of public and governmental oversight, routine vet and farrier care, 24 hour a day stablemen, and more. It does not hurt the carriage operators to have the ASPCA come and check on their horses, because there is nothing wrong with the horses and they have nothing to hide. It hurts the real animals in need.

SHAME ON YOU ALL. 

http://pix11.com/2012/12/12/first-on-pix-cats-and-dogs-dying-citywide-because-of-aspca-abuse-complaint-backlog/#axzz2NKUtUVDj