I read a quote recently from a person fighting to ban the carriage horses from New York, her name was Allie Feldman and she is the director of the leading animal rights group in New York, NY Class, she wants the carriage horses to be banned. She is quoted all the time. She said the horses were being treated cruelly and were unfulfilled. “They are lonely,” she said, “they don’t ever get to socialize with other horses.”  She thinks work for horses is cruel enough, but she is especially upset at the lack of socialization opportunities for the horses.

This puzzled me a bit, as I have never in my life seen a carriage horse who was alone. I figured I must be missing something, I decided to go out and check.

I also read that Jon Stewart told Liam Neeson on television that he doubted the carriage park horses were “fulfilled.” I pondered this also, these concerns about the horses emotional lives,  as I spent a few minutes trying to talk with this horse on Central Park South. I liked his attitude but was not making headway on whether or not he was fulfilled.

The horse was munching on a bucket of oats and waiting in line for his turn to take some people for a ride. His driver said he was shortly due for his 15-minute break, which comes every two hours. I wondered if this horse was pining for a farm in the country, where he could eat grass and drop manure for the rest of his life. I asked the horse if this was so, he didn’t answer – someone told me that horses don’t really talk or tell you what they were thinking  – but he gave me a look which I took to mean “are you kidding. Look at this location?”

Every minute or so, some passerby came over to take the horse’s photo and pat the horse on the head, or coo at how beautiful he was. One girl came up nervously and asked the driver if she could kiss the horse on the nose, but the driver said she wasn’t big enough, he hopped off and picked her up and she kissed the horse on  his forehead.

He was nice to her, but he really was locked onto the view of Central Park, which seemed to transfix him, he was watching some kids kick a soccer ball around.

I wondered when it was that he got lonely, since there were horses in front of him and behind him. In his stable, there are horses on either side of him all night long. In the park on his rides, there are horses in front of him and behind him, and in sight of him along the paths. Just like now, where he started whinnying to one of them out in the park. Some horses behind him in line answered.

“Is he ever alone?,” I asked the driver. “No, never, ” he said, “except when he is walking to and from work and usually, not even then.” The driver looked at me oddly, with a bit of a sneer, as if I had asked him a dumb question. The horse is, he said, socializing every minute of every day. I decided not to ask him if the horse was fulfilled, as I heard the drivers don’t care about the horses, they are cruel.

Still, I kept thinking about what the woman said.  “Do you need to play cards with the other horses?,” I asked the horse. “Or maybe hold hands or cuddle up in bed?” He did not answer, he was still whinnying to the horses out trotting in the park. He seemed to want all of the other horses to know where he was.  The horse paid no attention to me.  His driver told me he is due shortly for his mandated five-week vacation on a farm in the country, where there will be other horses with him all the time also.

This horse, he said, did not care to stand straight in line with the other horses, head down, sniffing for oats. He came up on the curb a bit to ponder the world. He seemed to have a lot to say, said the driver, he was constantly whinnying to the other horses, they were constantly whinnying back. “He wants everyone to know he is here,” said the driver.

“Is he fulfilled?,” I asked the driver.

“What?,” he said.

“Are you fulfilled?,” I asked the driver. Not so much when it’s cold, he said, but otherwise, sure.

I turned my attention back to the horse.

“Are you all right?,” I asked the horse. “Are you lonely?” He snorted and looked right through me. I thought I would walk over to the Alice In Wonderland statue in the park. I wanted to see if the White Rabbit was there. I wanted to ask him if the New York Carriage Horses were fulfilled.

(I just put a photo album up on Facebook of the Liam Neeson press conference at the Clinton Park Stables yesterday.)