The people seeking to ban the carriage horses of New York talk  about saving, freeing or rescuing them from the cruel bondage of the carriages they have been pulling for centuries. They pledge to send them off to rescue farms where they will never have to work, and can eat grass and live naturally. “There must be some place outside the city where there’s lots of grass where they can send these horses,” someone e-mailed me the other day, “any place is better than where they are.” I asked her why she felt this way, and she said she really had no idea, she had just reads all the time about how awful their lives are.

How do I explain to her that there is not grass for horses most of the year, and that horses eat so much of it so quickly that most of them end up eating hay all year, no matter where they are? It is the perfect recurring metaphor for the carriage horse debate raging in New York, the people who profess to care the most about them seem to have no idea what they are like. It was Machiavelli who said your friends can do you in as easily as your enemies.

The Coalition To Ban The Carriage Horses took out ads in several newspapers in New York City this week, it seems they are making sure the mayoral spine stays firm on this issue, they are perhaps unnerved by the specter of actor Liam Neeson – friends of the Carriage Horse trade –  taking off after the mayor and ridiculing the ban. Finally, many questions being raised in New York about the proposed ban and the motives behind it, and the claims that the horses are being abused and put in great danger just by living in New York. The ads said “Thank you, Mayor di Blasio for your promise to free us. We are counting the days.”  I read it a bit differently: you promised to do this, Mr. Mayor and we gave you a lot of money, we are watching you. I don’t know much about the mayor, but if he is, in fact, a politician, it seems this may not be the right issue at the right time after all.

I can’t claim to speak for the horses, I imagine them as saying “more hay and treats and attention please,” if they are saying anything at all, but the ads got me to thinking about just what it means to free the horses, what it means to save them, what, exactly,  is “rescue” for these animals?

When I began writing about these horses, I was surprised to learn that few critics or journalists had actually been to see the stables and the mayor refuses to go. And since the organizations that call themselves animal rights groups talk so much about how every single horse will go to one of those places outside of the city where there’s lots of grass when they are banned – they guarantee it –  I decided to go and talk to some rescue farm owners and see one. It was easy enough to do, I called several on the phone and then I found one on the Internet close enough for me to visit. I just picked it at random.

There are scores listed in New York State, many seeking contributions for their non-profit work. The one I chose was two hours from me, I came and drove up a long dirt road. It was not like the photograph I saw online, a big brown horse grazing behind a neat red barn. The barns I saw were falling down, the horses standing out in the cold and snow without blankets, rusting buckets and fences and debris scattered all around the “pasture.”

We see the word “rescue” and we don’t often think about what that really means.  It’s a good word to invoke and hide behind, who is against the rescue of needy animals?

To be clear, there are well run rescue facilities for horses, I have seen some and spoken at some.

But “rescue,” a noble term, doesn’t mean just one thing, it can mean many things, and if the ban on the horse succeeds, those horses that aren’t sent to slaughter one way or the other may find themselves on one of them if the animal rights groups succeed.

I spoke to a man who came out of the house on this rescue farm to meet me.  He was in his 50’s, wearing a stocking hat, he seemed tired and harried. And of course, he was suspicious of me and my purpose.

I want to say that it would be irresponsible and dishonest of me to suggest this rescue farm is the story of all rescue farms, or typical of them all, just as it is irresponsible to put human words and motives into the mouths of horses or suggest that all the carriage horses in New York are suffering and abused, because some have been. It is no secret in the animal world that rescue preserves and horse farms are struggling, some have resources, most do not have many. One foundation study found what most horse people already know,  that of the estimated 500 horse and animal rescue farms in the Northeast, all but a handful are struggling financially and limiting the number of animals they can care for.

The man at this farm was wary of me at first – he didn’t like the sight of my camera, I promised not to reveal his name or location. Ironically, he was concerned I was from an animal rights group coming to investigate him. The man had heard of me, even read one of my books, he is a dog lover. He was honest with me, he had a score of horses, some mules and goats, he was also an animal warden and had a dozen dogs, mostly Pit Bulls, in kennels behind wire mesh fences. The horses have access to the inside of a barn, he said, and they get hay every day and fresh water. But he said it was hard times for his farm,  he depended on contributions and there weren’t many of those these days.

There were so many horses being sent to slaughter now, he said, so many horses, donkeys and mules in trouble, that he took the ones he could and did the best for them that he could manage. He said he knew the place didn’t look good but he didn’t have the money to fix it up. He was, at least, saving animals. “There are a lot of horse farms and rescue farms,” he said, “most of them are hurting.”  People give up their horses when they can’t work or when they get old and sick and can’t afford them any longer.

He said the inside of the barn was warm and clean, he did not agree to let me see it.

I would not say any of the animals I saw there were being  neglected or abused, I would say they were demonstrably worse off than the carriage horses are in New York City, where they are offered many protections, they are intensely regulated,  kept in heated buildings, work in the full view of citizens and authorities, are fed regularly and received human attention daily and regular exercise from their modest work. Pulling rubber-wheeled carriages on flat ground is not serious work for horses, according to people like Buck Brannaman, the horse trainer and inspiration for The Horse Whisperer movie.  The horses here were confined to two barns and a small circular corral, they got little exercise.

It’s also important to point out in this complex story that the horses are private property as of now, as the law stands the protesting groups have no say whatsoever in what happens to them. It is believed some would go to the farms of their owners, some would be sold to other carriage horse owners, as they are valuable, and some, for various reasons, would almost certainly go to slaughter, killed in order to be saved.

I asked the man if he knew about the New York Carriage Horses, he said he did, he knew of them, he had been to the auctions in nearby Pennsylvania where many of the carriage horses come from, auctions where the slaughterhouses go to buy horses to take to Canada and Mexico and kill. Most of those horses are rescue horses, he said, they would likely be dead if they didn’t have work to do in New York City. He said he could never afford to take any of them to his farm, they are too big, eat too much hay, and they are worth too much money. “As you can see,” he told me,” there isn’t much land here, there is not much grass, the horses here get hay all year.”

I’d heard before that the carriage horses don’t really need rescuing, they have been rescued already, but it sort of makes my head spin when I read all of the things written about them on various websites from organizations that call themselves animal rights groups.

I felt considerable empathy for this man, I liked him, he seemed sincere and he candid with me, he could easily have just thrown me off of his property.  I could see that he loves horses very much and was doing everything he could to save some. He said he hopes the carriage horses stay where they are, they will get better care there than many rescue preserves could give them. It is silly, he said, to think working horses don’t want or need to work. His horses, he said, are mostly older, they are done, they can’t be worked and have no value to people, he is the last resort. People who have work for horses – there is not much anymore, he said – save their lives.

The man told me there are no regulations covering his care of his horses other than the standard statutory laws covering neglect and abuse. No vets come to check on his horses, he is not required to give them blankets or medical treatment or a certain amount of food. They have absolutely no protection. He readily conceded that when his horses get sick, he sometimes has to have them euthanized if the medical costs are too high – there is no money for expensive veterinary procedures. He will not, he says, send them to auction.

When I saw the posters in the New York papers showing images of the horses sucking up to the mayor pleading to be freed,  I saw once again the intensity of the emotional, rather than factual, arguments about the horses. Only one person has been charged with abuse or neglect in 150 years, and only one horse has died as a result of a traffic accident in the past twenty years. What, exactly, is it that the horses need to be freed from? What does being rescued again really mean for them?

Perhaps the most telling statistic about horses in the United States is that more than 150,000 of them were sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico last year, according to the Associated Press. If they are banished from New York City, there is absolutely to guarantee that most of these large and strong horses, all expensive to feed, will not be thrown into this bloody animal catastrophe, a massacre people who love animals might be working to prevent rather than contribute to.

It seems uncertain at best – absurd really – to think that the country’s beleaguered animal sanctuaries can or would suddenly and permanently absorb 200 large and healthy working horses from New York and feed and care for them for the rest of their lives. It is a false and cynical promise, and no one who loves horses more than their own emotional – or perhaps financial –  needs and interests would guarantee it with a straight face.

I didn’t stay at this horse rescue farm long, and I left with a heavy heart.  Don’t we owe the animals in our world  more than this? Are they really better off here than with us, among people who get to know them and care for them?

Here’s another hard and undeniable fact about this issue: the one thing that saves the lives of more horses than anything is work. Horses  that have work live to do it and are well cared-for because they are valuable. In a capitalist society, that should be plain enough. The critics of the Carriage Horse Industry claim it is abusive for horses to be worked for money, it is precisely their monetary value that keeps them alive and so well cared for. Horses that have no work or can no longer do it are among the most vulnerable animals in our world, the first to get taken off farms and race courses and private estates and put into those trailers and taken off to die, often in horrible circumstances.

Is this, I wonder, the fate that the horses are begging the mayor to free them for?

There is only one single thing all of the participants in this wrenching drama can agree upon. That is that the Carriage Park Horses need to be saved.

But the question facing anyone who loves animals is pretty simple:  from who?