This is what Edith Birnkrant, the New York Director Of Friends Of Animals, told the New York Times recently: “They (the Central Park horses) are shackled into their carriages, pulling through streets of a chaotic unnatural environment and go back to their cells. They need the ability to graze and roam freely.”

As a writer, I am sensitive to language, and de-constructing this quite remarkable sentence, this and many like it broadcast and printed without challenge again and again by journalists all over New York City, I see that animals rights often seem to be about what people need, not what animals need.

Working animals are “harnessed,” they are not “shackled.” Slaves and prisoners are shackled, Freud would grasp the association with victimization in the speaker’s mind, it is a manipulative and distorted thing to say. Is every harnessed animal (you can see the “shackle” in the photo above) “shackled” and abused? Central Park is not a “chaotic” environment, it is well designed, orderly and heavily policed, there are plenty of chaotic streets in New York, the horses do not work in them, they use the streets to get to and from their stables. Is it okay for people, children, dogs and cats to live on these horrific streets, but no working horses?

In Ms. Birnkrant’s view, the horses are not living in clean,  heated stalls, but in “cells,” once again the analogy to prison or worse, the invocation of slavery and extreme cruelty. Words matter, they ought to be truthful, not distorted, especially when dealing the fate and lives and future of animals in this world.

Then, the idea that they “need to graze and roam freely.” Working animals do not need to roam and graze freely, they need work, shelter, good and fresh food, water and health care. Animals in the wild rarely get these things, they suffer through extremes of weather, hunt for good, are attacked by predators, die from poison weeds and minor infections. It is a harsh life, neither suitable or even known to working farm animals. If I left my gates open – it has happened – my donkeys would not leave the farm, and why should they? They have connection, attention, food and shelter. The wild west isn’t wild anymore, nor are their open pastures for animals like the horses to graze upon, working horses have never roamed freely. No one who knows the first thing about equines would make such an unbalanced and ignorant statement about them, let alone a person claiming to speak for animals on behalf of their rights.

I tried writing this statement in a different way: “The animals are harnessed in their carriages, driven through sometimes crowded urban streets and taken back to their individual and heated stalls, where they are given hay, grain and fresh water.” See what words can do.

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For me, the plight of the Central Park horses is an awakening, a call to conscience for animal lovers, it awakens us to the fact that so many of the people who believe they are fighting for the rights of animals know little or nothing about them, and have no coherent, rationale or humane idea of what it means for an animal to have genuine rights in our world. It is interesting for me to concede that I would never identify myself as an “animal rights activist,” and I can tell you from the heart that I am one, as are almost all of the people reading this. The effort to drive the Central Park horses out of New York suggests that  the very term “animal rights” has become so associated with anger, disconnection, emotionalizing that most of the people who love animals – and surely those who don’t – would never identify themselves that way. That is not a good thing for animals.

When will the people who know and love animals come to speak for them? In our polarized and angry world, it is hard to imagine how that could happen. It might be too late for the Central Park horses, condemned to exile and likely death in order to be “saved” by their champions. Abuse is not only about abusing or neglecting animals, it is as much or more about misunderstanding their very nature. Is exile and likely death really a more humane fate than pulling a cart in Central Park?

And how ironic, how far the true rights of animals really are from our culture’s bumbling and inhumane efforts to define them. If any animals might serve as a role model for how working and domesticated creatures can live in the modern world, it would seem to be these horses. They look fine, strong,  with good coats, easy around people. They have work and purpose, they employ scores of people, they are mostly well cared for, fed and housed, they generate millions of dollars in income for their community,  their care is regulated by a bevy of laws, bureaucrats and police officers, they work in a big and beautiful space, they are much-loved by people, especially children,  who flock to New York City from all over the country and the world.  Do the people who love these animals have rights also?

There are so many animals in New York – dogs, cats, even chickens – whose lives are brutally confined, mistreated, totally unregulated, there is no movement to help them or improve their lives and circumstances. You can beat a Pit Bull into a rage all day long to protect your apartment and the mayor will not threaten you in his inaugural speeches or promise to make you change. But the horses, doing their work, harming no one, a symbol of history and romance, have to go, and right away, and with no more discussion of any kind. Exactly whose rights are we protecting?

I believe the most fundamental right of the Central Park Horses is to survive and be helped to live in the real world, not somebody’s very personal emotional issue or fantasy. They have the right to keep what they have,  to have purpose and meaning, to stay connected to the people who live in an urban society, where most Americans live. In cities like New York, people have become so disconnected from the natural world they have flooded the city with dogs and cats, mice and hamsters, ferrets and rats and other pets, to confine them in tiny asphalt spaces outside for a few minutes every day. Their need for nature and animals is great, it is a fundamental human need, they have the right to animals in their lives.

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To understand the dilemma of the Central Park horses, consider the city dweller in Brooklyn and the Bronx reading day after day, year after year, that these horses are “shackled” like slaves, reading Edita Birnkkrant’s idea of what animal rights are. You might think the mayor would know better, but who can blame the the average citizen for believing that these “shackled” animals – confined in “cells” when they are denied their freedom and forced to maneuver on “chaotic” streets – ought to be removed to roam freely on some mythical animal preserve. It sounds horrific, but the story just doesn’t feel any better than the hyperbolic quotes from so-called “activists.”

What, I wonder, is the motive for the people who own and ride the horses to mistreat them chronically and cruelly when they are fighting to hard to keep the right to work with them? Do the carriage owners only hire sadists and abusers? It doesn’t make much sense.

Who can blame a resident of Brooklyn,  many of whom have never seen an animal beyond a dog or a cat outside of a zoo,  for not understanding there are very few such farms with much in the way of resources? That world is gone, if it ever existed. Noone who is familiar with these few preserves believes that 200 large working animals will find a lifetime of peace and lush grazing (someone ought to point out that in much of the year these horses would be in “cells” just like the Central Park horses, and given “hay”  and when let outside, will be “shackled” when they are moved or seen by vets or visited by people). If you’ve been to animal rescue preserve, you also know that hardly any have vast acreage with good grass for large animals to graze freely for more than a few days. They will eat good hay, if they are lucky.

Jesus Christ must have been a worse abuser than the owners of the Central Park horses, he kept his little donkey in a “cell,” it was “shackled,” he pulled carts filled with wood. He loved his donkey, he rescued him from certain death. And almost certainly worked longer than nine hours a day – the Central Park horses can work no more than that on any day, and only five days a week.  And pulling a carriage for a big working horse on level is not exactly brute work.

Melissa Mark-Viverito, the City Council President, told reporters “it’s long past time we end these practices which treat horses so cruelly.” Here, again, is the rhetoric and hyperbole which makes me fear so much for the horses.  There do not seem to be rational voices in this discussion. The Central Park horses are treated the way working horses have been treated for many thousands of years, all over the world. Like many politicians on the left and the right, the people campaigning against the horses live in a bubble, they have little credibility beyond their own circles when they speak so unknowingly about the real lives of real animals. The working horses are not pets.

Rather than attract and expand a true movement for animal rights, these positions and statements cause the legions of real animal lovers of the world to cringe and hide. Animal rights is not a positive term for so many. Could that possibly be good for animals?

What the Central Park horses are teaching me is that I need to become more of an “activist,”  an advocate for the real rights of animals.  I’ve begun that by writing about the horses here on my blog, my posts are being shared thousands of times, are making their way around via social media. It’s a start for me, I have a soapbox.  Animals in our world will have no real rights or appropriate advocates until our broader society – animal lovers, government, residents, environmentalists – bring the discussion back to a reasonable and factual place. The discussion desperately needs knowledgeable people who care enough about animals to know what they are like, and can work on the difficult task of deciding what can be salvaged of their shrinking lives in our greedy and polarized world.

For the horses, I feel their spirits in the night, they are talking to me, calling out to the world. I wish them first and foremost the right to survive.

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