Some years ago, when I chose to live a life with animals, to study them and write about them and make it my work, I was proud to be a member of the animal rights movement. Just a few years ago, my Swiss steer Elvis was national poster boy for the campaign by the Human Society Of The United States (HSUS) to curb the horrific and real abuses of corporate farming.
Last week, visiting New York, watching this happy family pose for a carriage horse photo, I wondered how it came to be that I am now proud to be in moral opposition to the animal rights movement, opposed to almost everything they stand for and the truly appalling way in which they work.
This scene above should have been nothing but a happy and rewarding scene. It wasn’t, it was ugly and discordant.
Just a few feet from it; angry people waving placards were shouting that the horses are abused, the drivers cruel and uncaring, that the people posing for their family portrait were unthinking accomplices in abuse. Just before this family got into their carriage, they were handed a pamphlet which asked “Is cruelty on your sightseeing list?” I watched this scene unfold, and I asked myself if any rational person could look at this driver and his carriage and believe they were watching something that was cruel in any way.
The driver, who has been hearing these chants and listening to these accusations for years now, patiently recorded the image for them on their Ipad. I’ve noticed that almost every single person who takes a carriage ride wants an image of it, wants a memory. How strange the city government is determined to banish such a loved thing. How ironic that a movement that says it is for animal rights wishes to ban an opportunity for animals to be so loved.
I was touched by this portrait, as most people would have been, seeing this driver – his name was Angel – and how much he loved his work, how happy he was to take a photo. It was also nice to see this healthy, engaged and well cared for animal living a life of purpose and meaning alongside human beings in the great city, as the horses have been doing for thousands of years.
If not for this work, I have no doubt the horse would have long ago been killed, taken from auction to a slaughterhouse in Mexico and Canada, killed by having a steel bolt shot through his head. This is the fate of more than 150,000 horses each year. Does it really make sense to go after the safe ones?
If the groups that call themselves supporters of animal rights have their way, these healthy and protected horses will be taken from the city, vanish into private rescue farms or sent to slaughterhouses, never again seen by families like the one in this photo. Angel will lose his job and his way of life; the new riders of those eco-friendly, “cruelty-free” electric cars will be having their portraits taken in huge fake vintage cars, even uglier versions of the Disneyland Main Street trams. The horses are natural to Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead designed it with them in mind. Imagine his response to the idea of fake vintage electric cars in his beautiful park.
The horses have brought us some powerful messages from New York; they are, in fact, bringing the wind and the thunder, just as Chief Arvol Looking Horse predicted.
They are calling us to reclaim the idea of animal rights, to redefine it as almost all of us who love animals have come to see – in sadness and great disappointment – that the people who claim to be supporting the rights of animals are, in fact, anything but supporters of animal rights. They are without reason or compassion. They are driving animals from the world. The movement as it is represented in New York has become unconscionably cruel and dishonest. That alone is enough reason for them to lose any legitimacy or say in the future of the carriage horses.
The animal rights groups in New York have little to do with animals, they distort or invent facts, they arbitrarily apply the notion of abuse so irresponsibly and recklessly that it no longer has any meaning. They know nothing about animals, as it almost instantly apparent to anyone who pays any attention to them or listens to their messages; they don’t want animals anywhere near them or us. More than anything else, they use animals as a vehicle for showing the utmost contempt and hatred for human beings, whom they batter relentlessly.
Anyone who loves animals – especially the domesticated animals that have been our partners in the world for thousands of years – understands almost intuitively that these animals never succeed in isolation from people, they survive and exist only when they become our partners in life. We cannot offer them paradise, they share the joys and travails of the world. The horses that used to roam the wild plains of America became extinct in the last century, as all animals do that do not have purpose and work with human beings.
I believe there are two sides, often more, to any issue, and I am open to listening to anyone’s arguments. But I have been researching this for six months now, and the animal rights position regarding the carriage horses is simply not true. The horses are not unhealthy, unhappy, or unsafe to themselves or people. They are not abused by any legal or responsible definition of the word. The animal rights movement there has shamed the very idea of animal rights. They have, in fact, united that fractious city in opposition to their brutal and dishonest practices and their lengthening record of dishonesty, harassment and personal attack.
All three newspapers have editorialized against them; they have lost the support of nearly three out of four New Yorkers in recent polls. The Teamsters have joined up with the Chamber of Commerce to come out against them, 78 per cent of all the small business in the city oppose them. At least partly because of them, the very idea of rights for animals has become a distasteful joke in the public mind. The carriage horse owners and drivers are not the only victims – animals will pay as well.
The horses have called the world’s attention to the urgency of their struggle to survive in New York. The animal rights movement has advanced a rigid and uniform ideology: to banish animals across the spectrum of human contact – pony rides, carriage horses, critical medical research, humane slaughter facilities, border collies who herd sheep, Labradors who hunt, the ancient culture of circuses and carnivals, the good work of good breeders, who keep the best traits of animals enduring, farmers who live with and milk cows, people who raise animals for food and sustenance, organic and chicken farmers who send their hens to market and sell their eggs, universities with farming schools that teach students how to raise and slaughter animals humanely.
The best chance for animals to survive in our world is for animal lovers to reclaim the idea of animal rights and define and redefine that it means. The rights of animals can only be protected in conjunction with the people who will care for them, live with them, and pay for their existence.
Here’s where I would start:
Animals have the right to survive everywhere in America, including it’s greatest cities.
Animals have the right to work, many have been bred for work for centuries and are fundamentally responsible for the growth, sustenance and progress of the civilized world.
Animals have to the right to be protected from rampant development, and from the displacement by technology and motorized vehicles, electric or otherwise. They are as important to New York as condos, pedicabs and taxicabs and the cars that clog the streets.
The carriage trade owners and drivers have broken no laws, committed no crimes, violated none of the hundreds of regulations inflicted upon them. The animal rights protesters talk often of the abuse of horses, but there is one pending case of neglect (for working a horse with a foot infection) against the more than 300 people working in the carriage trade. No driver has been convicted of animal abuse in the 150 year-year history of the trade. Abuse is not an argument or opinion; it is a crime, and if it is being widely practiced, perhaps the mayor and the animal rights organizations can explain why no driver has been accused of it.
Animals have the right to live natural, not utopian lives. Every accident is not a crime, every illness not a symptom of abuse, every difficulty not a call for rescue. If animals can only live on rescue farms and the preserves of wealthy celebrities, they will continue to disappear from the world, as they have been doing for hundreds of years.
Animals have the right to die in comfort and a humane way, not be confined to crates and shelters where they must live out their lives without freedom, purpose or human connection. The standard is not how long we can keep animals alive, but how well we can treat them while they live. Animals ought not be kept alive solely for the emotional gratification of human beings.
For me, the standard is not about disrespecting and denying death, it is this: we keep animals alive as best we can for as long as we can.
The horses in New York are mystical beings, they have called upon me and many others to speak for them, photograph them, write about them, save them. In many ways, they are the last stand for the very idea of animals existing among people.
More than 90 percent of the people in America live along the coasts. If the horses are driven from New York, it will be a natural catastrophe, it will signal the end of their glorious time with us, and will be a permanent stain on humanity and commitment to the natural world. It will reveal the cowardice and fecklessness of human beings, who have been unwilling to sacrifice anything of value in order to honor them and their work and keep them with us.
Genuine supporters of animal rights would be lobbying their mayor to improve the lives of the horses and their safety, not to endanger them by tearing them away from their familiar homes and humans and force them out into a dangerous and uncertain world.
A mayor who cared about animals as much as campaign contributions would be looking for developers who might buy the stables in exchange for newer and more modern facilities. He might be lobbying for special lanes to keep the horses out of rush-hour traffic, or the use of parklands for the horses to get more time outdoors when they are not working and in the city. They might think of making good use of these wonderful and domesticated animals, bringing the horses to the city’s poorer neighborhoods, to disabled or disadvantaged children for therapy and healing work. People who love animals know the good that they can do, the healing powers that they have.
The famed biologist Jared Diamond said of the draft horses that they were the most domesticable animals in the world, the best suited for life in big cities of any animal, including the dog. There is so much they could if their right to work and survive was respected. If you doubt their power, go and stand in Central Park and touch them or watch the joy and meaning they provide to so many of the people walking by. They need us, but we need them more.
The carriage horses are wonderful workers, as draft horses have been for thousands of years. If we love them, we will find more work for them to do, not less. Their role need not be confined to tourist rides in Central Park, they can do so much more. I have a therapy dog, Red, a border collie who works with veterans back from Afghanistan and Iraq. Before him, I had a hospice dog, Izzy. I see what animals can do for people all the time.
Animal rights and animal welfare are complex ideas; they can only be advanced if politicians, animal lovers, farmers, people who work with animals, legislators, behaviorists, trainers and scientists come together, thrash out their different ideas and reach some consensus. That’s the way a democracy works, not in ugly screaming matches on sidewalks. The mayor refuses to even speak to the carriage drivers or visit their stables. The animal rights groups in New York have wasted this opportunity in their dishonest, anti-democratic and hateful campaign against the carriage trade.
Animals will never have any chance of gaining real rights and genuine advances in their welfare until the animal rights movement is reclaimed by people who want animals to have rights. We need a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals than is being advanced by the movement that has embraced the title of animal rights.
It was once ethical to stand with the animal rights movement, it is no longer an ethical or moral movement, it no longer does good for animals or the people who truly love them. My steer Elvis has long gone to slaughter, he ended up feeling a homeless shelter for teenaged boys and helping them get through a couple of tough upstate winters. Today, I am sorry to say I would never consider permitting him to be a poster boy for the animal rights movement. I love animals too much.
I am proud to write about animals and live with them – right now, with donkeys, dogs, chickens, barn cats, and sheep. I am prouder, as almost all of the ethical and genuine lovers of animals I know are, to stand in opposition to the cruel and arrogant movement which threatens not only the carriage horses of New York, but everyone who wishes to live with animals. This is not just about the horses, but about our sacred and private connections to animals, and about Mother Earth. The horses are the spirits of a world that is literally coming apart from the deprivations of greedy and unknowing human beings.
If we can save the horses, perhaps we can begin to save the world. I have come to see that and believe it.