The people in New York, you know the ones who believe the carriage horses and all other animals should live in the wild, should be up here this weekend, it is pretty wild in the real world of real animals. The toughest thing about having animals like horses, donkeys and sheep is understanding the limits of what you can and can’t do for them.

This is hard time for animals who live in the wild – birds, deer, horses – many  suffer and perish in this kind of weather without human help. Anything edible is covered in ice and snow, there is much competition for little available food, little natural shelter, no way of getting warm. The wind chills may be – 50 tonight, the coldest in memory.

In our barn, we are able to grain the animals for energy, provide fresh heated water for warmth, a barn and stalls for shelter from the wind. As cold and unpleasant at it may get today and tonight, all of our animals will be alive and well in the morning, we have seen to it, it is a gift that people can give animals, who give so much back to us.

I pity the poor carriage horses if the mayor and his supporters in the animal rights movement get their way and the horses are taken from their warm, dry, clean stables and thrown out into the whirlwind that life in the wild often is. How very sad for animals that so many people have forgotten, or perhaps did not ever know, what safety really is for domesticated animals.

It is work, shelter, human care and connection. I can’t help but think of the carriage horses in this fierce cold and wind, they are not in the park today, but in their stables. They have everything an animal needs to survive in a cruel and unpredictable world, and the very people who should be protecting them – elected officials and people who claim to speak for animal rights – are seeking to take all of those protections away in the name of being humane. Can any rational person buy this?

Today, the carriage horses are, by custom and regulation, warm and dry in their stables, safe and comfortable,  better off even than my sheep and donkeys, who are not in a heated barn with four walls and three bales a day of fresh hay. Beyond the farm, deer and raccoons and birds are starving and dropping to their ground, their carcasses are everywhere. My animals are very well treated and cared for, but I can’t offer them what the carriage trade offers the horses.

When you think of the carriage horses, and of their future and their fate, look outside of your window today or talk a walk and ask yourself if this gentle and domesticated creatures – they have never lived in the wild – ought to be outside. I’d love to ask the mayor if the horses would really be better off in the wild today. Except he would not speak to me, or to the owners and drivers in the carriage trade.