And a great demo in Boston

How many horses have to die?
Activists have united worldwide in a global coalition to ban horse-drawn carriages. A good crowd braved the cold in Boston on Saturday, December 6, during a peaceful demonstration to publicize the plight of the horses. We're told that during the 90-minute demonstration, people were not taking carriage rides! Read more in The Boston Globe, online edition.
Comment moderation got to be too much for Boston.com, apparently. Seems this was a great demo! One of many that commemorated "Horses Without Carriages International."
Photo credit: Essdras M. Suarez/Globe staff

Embarrassingly off-base

The "sliming" tactics of the New York City carriage industry and the handful of individuals who support this inherently cruel industry are mind-boggling. It takes chutzpah to criticize one of the world's leading authorities on the humane treatment of carriage horses while promoting the under-handed "oversight" of a very biased veterinarian who has essentially been a lobbyist for the industry. Holly Cheever, DVM, eloquently answers her critics, including one Upper East Sider who venomously characterizied anti-carriage activists as "Machiavellian" and hurled insults at Dr. Cheever. The pinnacle of absurdity.
The Machiavellian line was hilarious -- I laughed out loud! But seriously, the insulting letter was so bad that I was embarrassed for its writer. Like that cringe that comes from listening to Sarah Palin.
The ever level-headed Dr. Cheever has previously described New York's carriage horse industry as the worst she has ever seen--and never humane. Read her comments as published in a February 2008 letter letter to Metro.

More mush from the wimp

Mayor Bloomberg, that is
The wimp is patting himself on the back for championing a new online system that allows dog owners to license their pets online. "Licensing is not just a good idea--it's actually the law," the mayor explained. The display is maddening, in view of the fact that Mayor Bloomberg couldn't give a damn about animals and he sure doesn't mind it that the horse-drawn carriage industry roundly ignores the laws pertaining to the welfare of the horses. What a guy.
Mayor McCheese allows Christine Quinn to corrupt the city council even beyond the its historic boundaries of awfulness, and he looks the other way when it comes to the politically entrenched, cash-only carriage industry that flatly disrespects the laws. Not to mention the virtues of decency and civility. It's been nearly a year since the audit detailed the any problems with the carriage industry. Does anyone have a progress report? Anything?

New York City's wild west

Can things get worse in Hell's Kitchen?
First, there's Shamrock Stables (pictured), and nearby are two other stables that have been in the news of late. None offers respite for overworked carriage horses.

A brave correspondent gave a hair-raising account of illegal, dangerous, and outrageous misconduct that she witnessed this week in the neighborhood. Not surprisingly, the route would indicate that this involved a carriage driver from one of two southernmost stables, either the awful West Side Livery or the dreadful Central Park Carriage Stables. (The latter, of course, is the stable owned by Cornelius Byrne, who was arrested in December on accusations of attempting to bribe an undercover officer to overlook alleged violations at his stable on West 37th Street).

The driver had traveled north on 11th Avenue, and then turned right on W. 45th Street. WHOA! That's a problem, because at this point the driver was traveling EAST on a WESTBOUND street, by way of the sidewalk!

It got worse. To get right at the busy intersection of 10th Avenue and 45th Street, the driver then decided to cut through the HESS fuel station, a block-long monstrosity of angry taxicab drivers, at-risk pigeons, jaywalking pedestrians, and automobile drivers who zigzag diagonally across the station to get from point A to point Q. Finally the driver pulled out onto 10th Avenue and went the correct way--with traffic--northbound on that dangerous journey to Central Park.
I COULDN'T DREAM THIS UP! Last year, a car knocked over a gas pump at that Hess Station! Thank God for shutoff valves. For the sake of humanity, please don't make horses go the wrong way on a way-way street and walk onto the speedway that is the Hell's Kitchen Hess station.

Romantic? Not

Chessbluff writes of romance and horse-drawn carriages:

If you need a carriage ride to fall in love with each other, then maybe you need to consider your options. Like, look for another partner! Get a cab, and leave the horses alone."

Well said. Check out his post: "New York City. Horse-Drawn Carriages. Animal Cruelty" at the "On Loving Animals..." blog.

Good news, bad news

Fisticuffs in Hell's Kitchen?
A cheerful correspondent on W. 45th Street tells me that he witnessed the standard angry gridlock Tuesday evening around 6 p.m. Turns out a testy taxi driver was madly honking his horn directly behind a horse-drawn carriage approaching Shamrock Stables. We're told that the carriage driver had some special words for the cabbie, along the lines of: "What the heck? It's a horse! Give it a break!" Good news, of course, the horse made it safely into the stable. Bad news is that the horse has to work in those conditions every day.
I could say more of the bad news faced by the carriage horses that must walk up steep ramps at various stables to get cramped stalls, but I'll leave it at that. The road rage in this neighborhood is classic, what with drivers hell-bound for New Jersey and cabbies who just filled up the tank at the Hess station.

In case you missed it

A police horse bolted at the sound of screeching brakes and ran free earlier this month on a street in lower Manhattan. This after throwing his rider, a veteran police officer. Fortunately, the horse, Aldo, found his way back to the stable and the officer suffered no serious injuries.
Thanks, Flynn, for suggesting this worthy topic! Two words: horses spook. More precisely, no horse is unspookable. That's the long and short of it. More later. Say, don't those police horses have NICE DIGS!
Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Anything but authentic

John B. Moore, like many others, once thought that New York's carriage industry was a harmless tradition that didn't warrant a second look. Now, he writes on the Central Park Blog, he has been forced "to confront the awful truth" about the industry, reckoning that there is no excuse for making the horses live the way they do--living in squalid cells and working in some of the nation's worst traffic.
Like many of us who have discovered this same awful truth, The Central Park Blogger has been confronted with the industry's PR machinery, which is quite elaborate. Between the paid PR person (Carolyn Daly) and lobbyist Thomas McMahon (whose lone associate in his firm, Jean Kim, is lobbying for the carriage industry), and the unfortunate mix of politics and "oversight," given that McMahon's wife, Linda Gibbs, is the Bloomberg appointee who oversees the Department of Health), you can begin to see how politically entrenched this cash-only industry is. Much effort is devoted to making the horse-drawn carriage industry appear to be an inconsequential diversion. Harmless? That it isn't, because putting horses into traffic endangers the horses as well as the public.

Support a ban on horse-drawn carriages

Special Shoes, Indeed

Are these the kind of "special shoes" that you were talking about, Carolyn, when you responded to Pink's "Buck Cruelty" billboard in Times Square?

Chester Elliot has a happy ending but used to be a Boston carriage horse. Like the horses in New York City, Boston carriage horses wear 1-inch thick heavy steel work shoes with a cleat at the heels and toes for grip. Notably, this steel shoe lends the distinctive "clip clop" sound that apparently generates tourist dollars. Chester's hoof (seen in photo above) suffered from thrush, which is not uncommon in carriage horses who don't get turnout, stand in filth all night, and pound the pavement repeatedly.

The thrush, which occurred inside Chester Elliot's hooves, was worsened by poor grooming during his carriage horse days (his belly was also matted with urine stains). His steel shoes restricted the circulation to his hooves; his pavement-pounding work further complicated the condition, creating a microbial soup inside his hoof. (ie, "hoof rot.")

Chester Elliot photo is used courtesy of the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages (Happy Endings).
Although Chester Elliot was not a NYC carriage horse, his condition is a common one and the photo of his foot ailment is descriptive. Lameness and hoof deterioration are commonly seen in carriage horses, equine veterinarian Holly Cheever, DVM, has written. Chester Elliott's story is similar to that of so many rescued carriage horses. Read more