A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
—William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
It was inevitable, and yet it’s always infuriating to hear about it when it actually happens. A carriage horse went down in the New York City streets last Wednesday, during a heat wave, from apparent exhaustion. Distressed onlookers described the incident with horror as they witnessed the carriage driver shout at and whip the horse, trying to get him back on his feet. But the poor thing was too exhausted, and just lay in the road until a mounted police unit came, stripped the harness from the horse, put a pillow under his head, and began to hose him down with cold water as he lay helplessly on the scorching pavement. The horse, a 14yr old gelding named Ryder, was unable to rise for a full hour.
Like everything else, carriage horses in the city are highly politicized. Seemingly everyone has an opinion, and there are vocal advocates for and against. So, anytime there is an incident like this, there can’t just be an honest accounting of what happened, it has to be used to advance a cause. I’ve reserved judgement on this issue until this point because I don’t really have a dog in this particular fight and I don’t have any control either way. I generally support the conscientious preservation of traditions and responsible, classical horsemanship—the two go hand in hand. But the condition of that horse was so shocking that anyone who signed off on putting him to work should be served a restraining order on behalf of all equines. That is not representative of any horsemanship I condone. So, in the absence of animal restraining orders—who is going to take responsibility for the welfare of these horses?
Clearly not the veterinarians. The Post article above quotes the horse’s vet as claiming it went down because it is suffering from EPM (Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis) which is contracted via opossum urine. Firstly, EPM is difficult to diagnose (the definitive test is a via cerebrospinal fluid, not blood tests, which are highly subjective and prone to inaccuracies—the blood test is cheaper and many choose to treat proactively without a definitive diagnosis if EPM is suspected because the other tests are expensive and invasive); secondly, extreme fatigue isn’t a typical presentation, but rather it presents with neurological symptoms like loss of coordination or balance, unusual posture—even paralysis, in advanced cases. Can EPM cause a horse to lose its balance and trip or fall? Yes. Does EPM cause a horse suddenly quit work, lay prone for an hour, completely unable to get up, then eventually rise again with little difficulty? Does it make a horse want to lap up water from puddles on the ground, as one bystander noted? Doubtful. I’ve had horses with EPM and I am skeptical of this diagnosis as a convenient way to CYA after an incriminating incident of neglect, allowing these horses back on the street. EMND (Equine Motor Neuron Disease) can cause symmetrical muscle wasting, loss of weight, and excessive recumbency in horses, but that should also have been ruled out before putting this horse to work. Vets have a duty to look after the health and wellbeing of the animals in their care, not be complicit in their abuse. If this vet is covering for the carriage company, it is a shameful dereliction of duty.
Even the average non-expert on the street could see the distress of the horse and easily assess his poor condition:
“I saw the horse collapse. He obviously was malnourished, dehydrated, hungry. The guy started whipping his horse and telling him to get back up instead of giving him water,” Uber Eats driver Kelvin Gonzalez, 25, told The Post.
“I told him, ‘Yo, stop whipping him, give him some water. That’s a horse, not a machine.’
“It’s really sad, man. You can tell that horse was not taken care of. You can tell he was exploiting that horse. The horse was hungry, he was thirsty. You can tell the horse collapsed from the thirst.” (from the NY Postarticle linked above)
The animal is incredibly thin. It doesn’t take a trained veterinarian or an expert horseman to see that the horse’s ribs, spine, and pelvis are protruding through his skin. This isn’t normal. A trained horseman or vet knows this for a fact, but any casual observer knows this intuitively. For a horse that works all day pulling heavy loads, he should be well-covered with muscle and a little fat. Instead, he’s bony and anorexic, with a wasted appearance. He has all the red flags of a horse that is overworked, underfed, stressed, and exhausted. Add to that extreme heat and dehydration, and you have a recipe for an event like the one that just played out. No disease is necessary to explain it (though it certainly wouldn’t help.) Just a poorly kept horse in need of some TLC. Could he also be sick? Sure. Could he have parasites or need his teeth floated (filed evenly to make chewing hay and feed more efficient)? Absolutely.
A good horseman checks a horse over when taking him out. If he looks ill or lame, he doesn’t get worked. If this horse was not right that day, he never should have been on the street. And if he is suffering from the early stages of EPM, why did no one notice it before they got him under harness? What the fuck was he doing on the street on a 90-100 degree day? Based on his very low body condition score, I wouldn’t feel comfortable working this horse under the best of conditions, let alone on a hot day in Midtown Manhattan. Factor in the alleged EPM diagnosis, and one has to wonder what was going on in the stables that no one noticed how weedy this horse looked AND that he perhaps lacked balance and coordination before harnessing him to a carriage and putting him out in city traffic? (Not to mention, anyone who saw a horse looking like this and still hired this carriage should do some soul-searching.) The negligence here runs deep and wide.
“Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion
Horses have become scenery to us and it’s easy for us to assume that they always have been. I’ve had people inside and outside the horse world tell me horses are “just livestock.” To them they probably are. Perhaps it is a cultural mindset derived from a long tradition wherein we’re told that a creator gave humans godlike “dominion” over the earth and its creatures to dispose of as we see fit. I’ve heard this argument countless times when people want to justify trophy hunting or factory farming to me. “But God gave us dominion over the animals!” Awesome, and did he, like, also tell you to be a total asshole about it? For many, it seems, that part is implied. I won’t delve into the psychology of animal abuse, but over the years I’ve seen far too many horses take the brunt of a human’s personal insecurities and inadequacies, with riders exulting in the “dominion” they’d finally achieved over something in their wretched lives. The willful exploitation or destruction of less-intelligent creatures isn’t some divine imperative, and I find it impossible to accept any tradition that casts such self-aggrandizing cruelty and destruction as virtue.
But there were traditions that preceded all that which did not make light of the fellow beings who share this earthly plane of existence. They recognized our interdependence, acknowledged the value of our fellow creatures (even as some of them became food and other products necessary for life) and honored and respected the sacrifice necessary to sustain that existence. Animals weren’t taken for granted, but taken in gratitude.
Even when horses were strictly a source of food for humans, that relationship was accompanied by reverence. Rites to honor and propitiate the spirit of the horse and, however naively, take an active role in his future welfare and continuance colored our relationship with these animals.
The horse in particular held a special, preeminent place in the hearts and minds of ancient societies. Even until the industrial revolution, humanity propelled itself forward on the sweat of horses unlike any other animal in history.
However, horses have also been treated horrifically in both labor and leisure. As a professional trainer who used to be an avid competitor on the A-Rated horse show circuit, I’ve seen things behind the scenes that still make me shudder. It’s why I gave up competition, dreams of riding professionally, and training full-time and now just keep and rescue horses on my own farm.
Undoubtedly, abuse follows wherever humans go. Human nature doesn’t change, and humans aren’t always fair to each other, so animals are likely to fare even worse than our fellow man. But it’s easy to believe the past was far worse than the present for animals like the horse, and that we’re always improving our humane treatment. Society is more enlightened and therefore the cruelty must be minimizing with each successive year. It would be nice to think so.
Sadly, that’s not the case. We take one step forward and two back. For every visible, highly publicized success, there are a dozen industrialized nightmares taking place out of sight. Look at racing. It’s a sport that used to be small, exclusive, and revered. Now it’s a full-blown vice industry that has developed more efficient ways to breed, torture, turnover, and discard exponentially more racehorses than it can sustain, and has developed stealthier technology to hide shady methods and meds from regulatory regimes. Are those horses better off than the racehorses of old? 972 horses have died at racetracks in 2021 alone. Countless others, who survived training but didn't make the grade, were sold at auction and shipped abroad to slaughterhouses, with many catastrophically injured in transit.
Then there are the PMU foals bred exclusively for production of the hormone replacement drug Premarin (from “pregnant mares urine”) and what becomes of them. Because of public outcry over the abuse of the these mares and wasteful slaughter of tens of thousands of foals each year, US production of the drug was simply shipped overseas, out of sight and reach of regulators. But the carnage in the name of uncomfortable hotflashes continues.
Faring only slightly better, show horses, averaging from 1000-1500lbs never leave their 10x10 or 12x12 stalls except to work. Which means that a big, fit, energetic, highly social herd animal evolved for living and traveling long distances over open plains, and grazing constantly, spends the majority of its life in solitary confinement in a tiny cell. Many of these horses develop neurotic “stable vices” like cribbing, weaving, and stall-walking—anxiety disorders in which horses release pent up frustrations or pacify themselves with self-destructive, repetitive behaviors. Many are heavily medicated at home, though most substances are banned by competitive organizations, so horses must be withdrawn from meds before competition (or have vets who are artful chemists.) We know these vices are manmade because horses in the wild or turned out in a field with others do not exhibit these behaviors; however, walking through any fancy show barn, one will be confronted with what essentially looks like an insane asylum, because that’s what it is. Horses grate their teeth along the stall bars, bite the walls, rock themselves back and forth, pace their stalls, kick the walls in frustration. And that’s not even delving into what happens once the training begins….
It hasn’t always been like this. Despite the grueling work that horses were often asked to do on behalf of humans, they were usually rewarded with a suitable field or paddock of grass and the company of other horses to keep them content. And because they were so valuable to individuals and society, and so closely associated with noble character and sovereignty, they were accorded a special place in the culture and even—at least in ancient times—revered as nearly sacred in their own right.
I’ve read that the Dutch language considers horses as one of the “Noble animals,” meaning it refers to them with the same terminology one would use for human anatomy, vs the standard terminology one would use for animal anatomy, bestowing on the horse an equal status with humanity. No other animal has this status in the language.
The ancient Scythians seem to have similarly loved and honored their horses. They cared for and kept them into old age. Senior horses with degenerative joint diseases have been found accompanying their owners in their eternal tombs, indicating their wish to bring their beloved partners along into the next life. These aged equines with diminished performance capacity were not thrown away or butchered for dinner. They were kept close, cared for, dressed lavishly, and brought to what their owners probably believed would be an afterlife of peace and lush pastures. A tough love, perhaps, by our standards, but they weren’t mere livestock. They weren’t expendable, there to be exploited for financial gain, exhausted at the end of a whip, left spent on the pavement on a sweltering day in a filthy, crowded city street.
Of all the indignities animals have suffered at the hands of humanity, the worst is the betrayal they suffer when they throw their bodies, their hearts, and their trust into whatever work we ask only to be repaid with our cruelty, our indifference.
If, as many believe, we have truly been given dominion over the earth and its creatures, surely it has not been for a purpose like this, but as a test of our humanity. How we treat those in our charge—how we speak for those who cannot speak, and how we care for those unable to care for themselves—is the fullest measure of our moral substance. Whether one believes we are bestowed by some creator with a sacred superiority, or rather that we are the self-appointed stewards of these generous, gentle beings, we have a duty. It’s hard to look around at our works and not conclude that we are failing.