Ayla of Duluth
07-04-2012, 12:26 PM
Recently, I have been made aware of claims of carriage horse abuse in New York. Prior to this morning's research on the topic, I was completely unaware of these happenings going on. So before I went off to work as a carriage driver myself, I wanted to say a few things that went through my mind as I was browsing these claims, because horses are very important to me, and I love seeing people smile when they come up to meet my horses.
A google search for "Carriage horse abuse NYC" brings up many websites on the subject, the first 3 are the ASPCA, NYCLASS, and obviously, PETA. NYCLASS stands for New Yorkers for Clean, Liveable, And Safe Streets.
Reading into the ASPCA website, they have a section for facts. It reads as follows;
"Facts about New York City's Carriage Horse Industry
There are now approximately 204 carriage horses in the city and approximately 300 licensed operators.
These horses are permitted to work nine hours a day, seven days a week.
There are no pastures for grazing, no opportunities to roll in the dirt, lie in the sun, run or socialize with an equine companion.
It is illegal for a driver to operate a carriage when the temperature is 90 degrees F or above, or 18 degrees F or below. No adjustment is made to account for wind chill or the humidity index.
After three carriage horses died during a heat wave in the summer of 1988, New York City Councilmembers approved a law that greatly restricted when and where these horses were worked. But in 1994, the law was weakened by lengthening the hours that the horses are allowed to work and enlarging the areas in which the horses are permitted to travel including more of traffic-congested midtown Manhattan."
Now it doesn't seem to me like ASPCA is trying very hard to persuade people that there is abuse going on. First, where's the proof of the carriage driver's hours? Surely out of the 300 licensed operators, you asked at least one of them how long they worked and posted proof instead of assuming. However, it's not that hard to believe. Here in Duluth, our carriage horses work from noon until around 10pm. Here's why its not abuse.
-Out of those ten hours of work, they get an hour off for feeding time, regardless of whether we have customers waiting for a ride.
-Out of the now 9 hours of work, an average of 4 hours are spent standing around. Whether it be waiting for customers, answering questions, loading people, dealing with money, all carriage horses DO get a break for the driver to deal with things like that. THIS INCLUDES THE HORSES IN NEW YORK.
-Horses were meant to stand almost 24/7. Our feet get tired after an 8 hour shift of standing, but horses go home after a ten hour shift and continue to stand in the pasture.
-10 hours in the hot sweltering sun? No way. From noon until 5, the sun is hot. When the sun starts going down, the temperature cools off and the horses can work the other half of their shifts in comfortable temperatures.
Their second point is there's no pastures for grazing, rolling in the dirt, lie in the sun, or socialize with other horses.
-I'm going to reiterate right off the bat, horses are not meant to lie down. When a whale is beached, it dies from its own body weight crushing it. The same goes for horses. On all 4 legs, the heaviest part of the horse (the belly) is suspended, where all the organs can be where they need to be. When a horse wants to lie down, its usually only for a few minutes, such as a 15 minute nap. A horse laying down for a long time is almost always a sign of injury or illness. So standing at work is not an issue.
The law about horses not working in certain temperatures? If it's illegal, how come nothing has been done to stop the drivers? Im sure the police could monitor them, but no one does, hence why they work outside the law.
-Temperature for a horse typically isn't an issue. Did you know horses were built to withstand the cold? They are actually most comfortable and most active in cold weather. They're arctic animals actually, they grow in winter coats to stay warm. their legs have extremely efficient circulation to keep them warm in cold temperatures, some horses actually roll in the snow to cover themselves and better insulate them from the wind. They are not dumb creatures. As for heat, that's a little harder on them, however they do sweat to cool off, just like we do. They also drink water and actually recycle it through their body, kind of like a coolant system at a power plant. How come people are angry about horses working in hot weather and not humans? We get overheated too ya know.
Three carriage horses died in a heat wave.
-Just like people, horses die of many causes. My horse passed away from colic due to the stablehand feeding him too much alfalfa.
-The ASPCA claims they died in a heat wave. Sure, so did lots of other animals, but the ASPCA fails to claim that the heat wave was the CAUSE of death for the animals. It could have been anything ranging from exhaustion to starvation to natural causes, to illness or injury. Just because it happened during the heat wave, doesn't mean it was due to the heat wave.
Now the ASPCA fails to back up these claims with any sort of proof, other than a picture of a carriage horse just standing there and looking around. Let me say a few things about that.
Notice the horse's hooves are polished. Would an abusive driver take the time to do that?
This horse is not imaciated in the slightest. The legs are strong and heavy, the neck is full, the face is not sunken in at all. The horses mane is also neatly trimmed. This is not an abused horse.
At the bottom of the page, there is also another picture of a carriage horse, this one obviously eating oats out of a bucket. So clearly these horses are not being starved. The horse is not imaciated, there are no bones showing, and he's holding his head high. That is a perfectly healthy horse.
The most important thing is the ASPCA fails to cite their images. Why? What's so hard about that? Even if they're the ones who took them, they don't say it. Suspicious...
ALRIGHT. Enough with them. Lets hear what the other webstites have to say.
One of the quotes from PETA.org on the subject states;
"Imagine for a moment that you're forced to do hard physical labor all day, seven days a week—whether it's sweltering hot or freezing cold outside,"
1.) Forced? I'd like to see a 150 pound man force an 800 pound animal to do anything it doesn't wanna do. Trust me, it doesn't work.
2.) Hard physical labor...you mean pulling carriages? Let me take this opportunity to teach everyone reading this about the physics of a carriage.
A horse PULLS a carriage. It doesn't CARRY it. The weight of the carriage shafts, the poles that the horse stands inside of (about 50 pounds by themselves, about 20 when hooked up to the carriage and horse) is completely supported by the harness the horse wears. A harness can vary in weight, anywhere from 30 pounds to 60 pounds. They don't get much heavier. All that weight is evenly distributed across the horse's back, so the comparisson to the weight the horse carries is equivalent to if you were wearing a backpack with 1 brick in it. Not bad at all.
The wheels carry the weight of the carriage, the only thing the horse has to do is apply foreward force to get it to move. After a horse gets around 3 seconds of momentum in, the carriage is very light to move. US CARRIAGE DRIVERS HAVE TO PULL THE CARRIAGES AROUND BY OURSELVES TO GET THEM TO THE HORSES. I weigh 100 pounds and I have no issue moving a carriage to my horse. I have no doubts that an 800 pound animal has no trouble moving the carriage either.
The harness of the horse is designed to bear the weight on the strongest part of the horse's body. The harness is usually hooked up to a collar around the horse's neck to allow the horse to throw as much or as little body weight into pulling as it needs to. Seriously, if a horse so much as leaned foreward to rest against the collar, he'd fall over from the carriage moving foreward with it. It takes very little effort to move a carriage. So hard labor? Nope.
3.) The temperature thing. You know, horses can regulate their body temperature just like people do. They sweat and drink water to keep cool, their blood circulates efficiently to keep them warm. They do get sluggish in the heat sometimes, but who doesn't? It doesn't mean they're miserable, it means they're sleepy.
Let's do one more, I've still got an hour and a half to kill.
"During their workday, these horses are forced into dangerous traffic, where they develop respiratory ailments from inhaling exhaust fumes and debilitating leg problems from pounding the hard pavement. They constantly weave between cars and are often spooked by loud noises on the streets. As a result, accidents sometimes occur in which many horses and people are seriously injured or even killed (http://www.mediapeta.com/peta/PDF/HDCFactsheet_August_2011.pdf). When not working, these horses are confined to cramped stalls in which they are unable to turn around, stretch their legs, or even lie down comfortably. Don't get taken for a ride. Join Lea and countless others in boycotting horse-drawn carriages!"
1.) By law, horses have the right of way in traffic. It is no fault of the carriage driver if a car isn't paying attention or doesn't know the law and causes an accident. Occasionally, horses do get into accidents from being spooked. This is why they have blinders on the harness that cover their eyes so they can only look foreward. People have taken every precaution they can to make horses safe. The horses wear a check line to keep them from putting their head down far enough to kick at the carriage behind them when spooked. Also, might I point out that before there were paved roads and traffic laws, carriages were abundant in the streets, side by side with primitive automobiles and nobody had an issue with it then.
2.) Developing respiratory ailments from the exhaust fumes...Horses breathe the EXACT same air we breathe, so by that nature, we're in danger of respiratory ailments too. Pity me! I breathe bad air! I'm not falling for that. Given the lung size of a horse vs the lung size of a human, we would be developing these ailments far before the horses did. When walking, a horse's nose is about 3 feet off the ground. The tailpipe of a typical car is about a foot or less off the ground. Taking in account of the breeze that blows the fumes around and dilutes them, horses are in very little danger from respiratory damage.
3.) Does this lady know what the function of a horse shoe is? Its to protect the hoof from getting worn down by the pavement to an odd angle that would cause a horse leg issues. Without horse shoes, this is a real possibility, but it is very illegal for horses to be worked on the streets without horse shoes. The ASPCA and PETA could have easily taken out a carriage by that law alone. The shoes also cushion the impact on the horse's legs, much like the shoes you and I wear to keep our feet and knees from hurting during long walks. Its exactly the same. These shoes also help the horse grip the pavement for maximum traction. On the bottom of a horse shoe, there are 4 dime sized spots of an extremely hard metal that is melted and dripped onto the shoe. This is like the fuzzy rubber things on a bike or car tire, and like the pattern of rubber on the bottom of a sneaker. It helps grip. The shoes were meant to keep the horse's legs healthy.
4.) If a horse was kept in a cramped stall, its joints would stiffen and it would be unable to work. This means the owner of the company would lose money by taking away that source of income and having to spend thousands of dollars on another horse. It simply isn't good for business. A horse has to be healthy to bring in income. I find it very hard to believe that a carriage driver would neglect the animal he depends on for a living.
Stalls were not meant for horses to lay down in. Stalls are temporary containment areas for horses, much like tying them to a pole so they dont just go walking off. And like I said earlier, horses don't lay down very often. It hurts them after laying down for too long. Horses actually do sleep standing up, so a horse in a stable would still be able to get a restful sleep.
So after reading through all that and thinking those paragraphs to myself, I decided to take a look at the carriage driver's side. This man is a carriage driver in New York, and has taken multiple videos to show people what really goes on in the carriage industry. He has videos showing the licenses of the business, where the horses drink, the roads they walk on, he shows us the place where the horses are kept after work, and he even takes video of PETA activists terrorizing him while he's trying to work. That's more proof for his side than I've seen for PETA or the ASPCA combined.
http://www.youtube.com/user/StopLiesSeeTruth
So I'd like to hear your opinions on the matter. Have I falsely stated anything? Who's side do you agree with? General discussion.
Also I'll answer any questions about my job as a carriage driver that you guys might have. :) Thanks for reading.
A google search for "Carriage horse abuse NYC" brings up many websites on the subject, the first 3 are the ASPCA, NYCLASS, and obviously, PETA. NYCLASS stands for New Yorkers for Clean, Liveable, And Safe Streets.
Reading into the ASPCA website, they have a section for facts. It reads as follows;
"Facts about New York City's Carriage Horse Industry
There are now approximately 204 carriage horses in the city and approximately 300 licensed operators.
These horses are permitted to work nine hours a day, seven days a week.
There are no pastures for grazing, no opportunities to roll in the dirt, lie in the sun, run or socialize with an equine companion.
It is illegal for a driver to operate a carriage when the temperature is 90 degrees F or above, or 18 degrees F or below. No adjustment is made to account for wind chill or the humidity index.
After three carriage horses died during a heat wave in the summer of 1988, New York City Councilmembers approved a law that greatly restricted when and where these horses were worked. But in 1994, the law was weakened by lengthening the hours that the horses are allowed to work and enlarging the areas in which the horses are permitted to travel including more of traffic-congested midtown Manhattan."
Now it doesn't seem to me like ASPCA is trying very hard to persuade people that there is abuse going on. First, where's the proof of the carriage driver's hours? Surely out of the 300 licensed operators, you asked at least one of them how long they worked and posted proof instead of assuming. However, it's not that hard to believe. Here in Duluth, our carriage horses work from noon until around 10pm. Here's why its not abuse.
-Out of those ten hours of work, they get an hour off for feeding time, regardless of whether we have customers waiting for a ride.
-Out of the now 9 hours of work, an average of 4 hours are spent standing around. Whether it be waiting for customers, answering questions, loading people, dealing with money, all carriage horses DO get a break for the driver to deal with things like that. THIS INCLUDES THE HORSES IN NEW YORK.
-Horses were meant to stand almost 24/7. Our feet get tired after an 8 hour shift of standing, but horses go home after a ten hour shift and continue to stand in the pasture.
-10 hours in the hot sweltering sun? No way. From noon until 5, the sun is hot. When the sun starts going down, the temperature cools off and the horses can work the other half of their shifts in comfortable temperatures.
Their second point is there's no pastures for grazing, rolling in the dirt, lie in the sun, or socialize with other horses.
-I'm going to reiterate right off the bat, horses are not meant to lie down. When a whale is beached, it dies from its own body weight crushing it. The same goes for horses. On all 4 legs, the heaviest part of the horse (the belly) is suspended, where all the organs can be where they need to be. When a horse wants to lie down, its usually only for a few minutes, such as a 15 minute nap. A horse laying down for a long time is almost always a sign of injury or illness. So standing at work is not an issue.
The law about horses not working in certain temperatures? If it's illegal, how come nothing has been done to stop the drivers? Im sure the police could monitor them, but no one does, hence why they work outside the law.
-Temperature for a horse typically isn't an issue. Did you know horses were built to withstand the cold? They are actually most comfortable and most active in cold weather. They're arctic animals actually, they grow in winter coats to stay warm. their legs have extremely efficient circulation to keep them warm in cold temperatures, some horses actually roll in the snow to cover themselves and better insulate them from the wind. They are not dumb creatures. As for heat, that's a little harder on them, however they do sweat to cool off, just like we do. They also drink water and actually recycle it through their body, kind of like a coolant system at a power plant. How come people are angry about horses working in hot weather and not humans? We get overheated too ya know.
Three carriage horses died in a heat wave.
-Just like people, horses die of many causes. My horse passed away from colic due to the stablehand feeding him too much alfalfa.
-The ASPCA claims they died in a heat wave. Sure, so did lots of other animals, but the ASPCA fails to claim that the heat wave was the CAUSE of death for the animals. It could have been anything ranging from exhaustion to starvation to natural causes, to illness or injury. Just because it happened during the heat wave, doesn't mean it was due to the heat wave.
Now the ASPCA fails to back up these claims with any sort of proof, other than a picture of a carriage horse just standing there and looking around. Let me say a few things about that.
Notice the horse's hooves are polished. Would an abusive driver take the time to do that?
This horse is not imaciated in the slightest. The legs are strong and heavy, the neck is full, the face is not sunken in at all. The horses mane is also neatly trimmed. This is not an abused horse.
At the bottom of the page, there is also another picture of a carriage horse, this one obviously eating oats out of a bucket. So clearly these horses are not being starved. The horse is not imaciated, there are no bones showing, and he's holding his head high. That is a perfectly healthy horse.
The most important thing is the ASPCA fails to cite their images. Why? What's so hard about that? Even if they're the ones who took them, they don't say it. Suspicious...
ALRIGHT. Enough with them. Lets hear what the other webstites have to say.
One of the quotes from PETA.org on the subject states;
"Imagine for a moment that you're forced to do hard physical labor all day, seven days a week—whether it's sweltering hot or freezing cold outside,"
1.) Forced? I'd like to see a 150 pound man force an 800 pound animal to do anything it doesn't wanna do. Trust me, it doesn't work.
2.) Hard physical labor...you mean pulling carriages? Let me take this opportunity to teach everyone reading this about the physics of a carriage.
A horse PULLS a carriage. It doesn't CARRY it. The weight of the carriage shafts, the poles that the horse stands inside of (about 50 pounds by themselves, about 20 when hooked up to the carriage and horse) is completely supported by the harness the horse wears. A harness can vary in weight, anywhere from 30 pounds to 60 pounds. They don't get much heavier. All that weight is evenly distributed across the horse's back, so the comparisson to the weight the horse carries is equivalent to if you were wearing a backpack with 1 brick in it. Not bad at all.
The wheels carry the weight of the carriage, the only thing the horse has to do is apply foreward force to get it to move. After a horse gets around 3 seconds of momentum in, the carriage is very light to move. US CARRIAGE DRIVERS HAVE TO PULL THE CARRIAGES AROUND BY OURSELVES TO GET THEM TO THE HORSES. I weigh 100 pounds and I have no issue moving a carriage to my horse. I have no doubts that an 800 pound animal has no trouble moving the carriage either.
The harness of the horse is designed to bear the weight on the strongest part of the horse's body. The harness is usually hooked up to a collar around the horse's neck to allow the horse to throw as much or as little body weight into pulling as it needs to. Seriously, if a horse so much as leaned foreward to rest against the collar, he'd fall over from the carriage moving foreward with it. It takes very little effort to move a carriage. So hard labor? Nope.
3.) The temperature thing. You know, horses can regulate their body temperature just like people do. They sweat and drink water to keep cool, their blood circulates efficiently to keep them warm. They do get sluggish in the heat sometimes, but who doesn't? It doesn't mean they're miserable, it means they're sleepy.
Let's do one more, I've still got an hour and a half to kill.
"During their workday, these horses are forced into dangerous traffic, where they develop respiratory ailments from inhaling exhaust fumes and debilitating leg problems from pounding the hard pavement. They constantly weave between cars and are often spooked by loud noises on the streets. As a result, accidents sometimes occur in which many horses and people are seriously injured or even killed (http://www.mediapeta.com/peta/PDF/HDCFactsheet_August_2011.pdf). When not working, these horses are confined to cramped stalls in which they are unable to turn around, stretch their legs, or even lie down comfortably. Don't get taken for a ride. Join Lea and countless others in boycotting horse-drawn carriages!"
1.) By law, horses have the right of way in traffic. It is no fault of the carriage driver if a car isn't paying attention or doesn't know the law and causes an accident. Occasionally, horses do get into accidents from being spooked. This is why they have blinders on the harness that cover their eyes so they can only look foreward. People have taken every precaution they can to make horses safe. The horses wear a check line to keep them from putting their head down far enough to kick at the carriage behind them when spooked. Also, might I point out that before there were paved roads and traffic laws, carriages were abundant in the streets, side by side with primitive automobiles and nobody had an issue with it then.
2.) Developing respiratory ailments from the exhaust fumes...Horses breathe the EXACT same air we breathe, so by that nature, we're in danger of respiratory ailments too. Pity me! I breathe bad air! I'm not falling for that. Given the lung size of a horse vs the lung size of a human, we would be developing these ailments far before the horses did. When walking, a horse's nose is about 3 feet off the ground. The tailpipe of a typical car is about a foot or less off the ground. Taking in account of the breeze that blows the fumes around and dilutes them, horses are in very little danger from respiratory damage.
3.) Does this lady know what the function of a horse shoe is? Its to protect the hoof from getting worn down by the pavement to an odd angle that would cause a horse leg issues. Without horse shoes, this is a real possibility, but it is very illegal for horses to be worked on the streets without horse shoes. The ASPCA and PETA could have easily taken out a carriage by that law alone. The shoes also cushion the impact on the horse's legs, much like the shoes you and I wear to keep our feet and knees from hurting during long walks. Its exactly the same. These shoes also help the horse grip the pavement for maximum traction. On the bottom of a horse shoe, there are 4 dime sized spots of an extremely hard metal that is melted and dripped onto the shoe. This is like the fuzzy rubber things on a bike or car tire, and like the pattern of rubber on the bottom of a sneaker. It helps grip. The shoes were meant to keep the horse's legs healthy.
4.) If a horse was kept in a cramped stall, its joints would stiffen and it would be unable to work. This means the owner of the company would lose money by taking away that source of income and having to spend thousands of dollars on another horse. It simply isn't good for business. A horse has to be healthy to bring in income. I find it very hard to believe that a carriage driver would neglect the animal he depends on for a living.
Stalls were not meant for horses to lay down in. Stalls are temporary containment areas for horses, much like tying them to a pole so they dont just go walking off. And like I said earlier, horses don't lay down very often. It hurts them after laying down for too long. Horses actually do sleep standing up, so a horse in a stable would still be able to get a restful sleep.
So after reading through all that and thinking those paragraphs to myself, I decided to take a look at the carriage driver's side. This man is a carriage driver in New York, and has taken multiple videos to show people what really goes on in the carriage industry. He has videos showing the licenses of the business, where the horses drink, the roads they walk on, he shows us the place where the horses are kept after work, and he even takes video of PETA activists terrorizing him while he's trying to work. That's more proof for his side than I've seen for PETA or the ASPCA combined.
http://www.youtube.com/user/StopLiesSeeTruth
So I'd like to hear your opinions on the matter. Have I falsely stated anything? Who's side do you agree with? General discussion.
Also I'll answer any questions about my job as a carriage driver that you guys might have. :) Thanks for reading.