Talking to Animals

by Jon Katz

  Ariel is a New York City carriage driver. Born in Israel, he grew up with horses on a kibbutz. He is a profoundly spiritual man and believes horses have great power to heal and help human beings. Ariel now lives in the Bronx, but his real home is the park. He is there as often as he legally can be. He knows every path, pond, tree, and rock formation. If you are in love, or touched by the stars, Ariel is very happy to take you on an enchanting midnight ride in Central Park. The ride will remind you that the horses carry magic and mystery with them, and if they are taken from the park, it will lose its soul and spirit.

  Ariel is a friend now, and people who consider themselves animal rights activists have accused him and other carriage horse drivers of being hateful and greedy, torturing and exploiting their horses by forcing them to pull carriages in the great park. This confounds Ariel, as it does people who know him.

  If you are curious, you can go to the park the next time you might be in New York City—any driver can tell you where Ariel is—and watch him with Rebecca, his carriage horse. He sings to her in several languages, plies her with carrots and cookies, comes to the stable before dawn to brush her and talk to her and tell her stories. Rebecca is a proud, loving, healthy, and eager-to-work horse. Ariel trained her himself. You could blow up a car right next to her, he says, and she would not kick or bolt.

  I never expected to be drawn into Ariel and Rebecca’s world, to be drawn into the carriage horse controversy, but it proved to be one of the most profound experiences of my life with animals.

  In January 2014, I read a series of news articles quoting various animal rights organizations and activists as saying that the more than two hundred draft horses of the New York City carriage trade were being abused and that the trade ought to be banned, the horses sent off to rescue farms.

  Like most people, I was only peripherally aware of the carriage horses. My only connection to the horses was seeing them lined up on Central Park South, strikingly beautiful creatures standing calmly in a rolling sea of tourists, pedestrians, dog walkers, office workers, bicyclists, joggers, pedicabs, and picnickers. I had never been on a carriage ride or thought to take one. That was something tourists did, like going up to the top of the Empire State Building. I would stop once in a while to look at the horses or pet one on the nose, as so many people do. I thought they were quite beautiful and fit very naturally into the park.

  Protestors had become increasingly vocal and angry about the horses. The stories painted a grim, even horrific picture. The media reported on their claims, almost invariably without confirmation or reply from the carriage trade. It was alleged that the horses were confined in stalls too small for them to lie down in, that they were fed rat-infested grain, stood in filthy stables in mounds of manure.

  The horses, said the demonstrators, were depressed, lame, covered in sores, and suffering from lack of proper medical care. They were overworked, sickly, treated harshly by their handlers, who were described online as marginal people, alcoholics, thieves, greedy, money-grubbing villains. The drivers and owners of the horses were consistently portrayed as evil, subhuman. They were not businesspeople, or misguided people, or even old-fashioned people, but something other than human beings, not entitled to any measure of respect or consideration.

  The local animal rights groups seeking to end the carriage trade had recently picked up some heavy-duty allies in their campaign against the carriage horses. The ASPCA and Humane Society, once guardians and caretakers of the carriage horses in New York City, had joined ranks with the new and more extremist animal rights groups—PETA, the U.S. Humane Society, NYCLASS—and had changed course. They said the horses didn’t belong on New York’s congested streets any longer, that they ought to be returned to the wild or to rescue farms, where they would never have to work again. The campaign against the horses really heated up in December 2013 when the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, said it was “inhumane” for the horses to be in New York City. “We are going to get rid of the horse carriages. Period,” de Blasio said in response to a question at his first press conference even before taking office. He said the horses would be banned in the first week of his term, on “day one.”

  “Just watch me do it,” he said. “It’s over.”

  NYCLASS, the group funding and spearheading the ban effort, had given the mayor enormous financial support in his election campaign and devoted nearly one million dollars to defeating his main opponent in the race.

  New York is a cynical town, and many people in the carriage trade and their supporters came to believe that the mayor was supporting the real estate developers—including the head of NYCLASS and leader of the ban-the-horses-campaign—who were said to be trying to acquire the horse stables in the hot West Side real estate market.

  Why did I care? I write about animals, of course, but something else has become clear to me in the last couple of years. I think the horses called me there. At least that’s what a Native American spiritual leader told me, and what I have come to believe. The horses imagined their own future.

  My own idea was different than the understandably suspicious carriage horse drivers. It has become a popular idea in America, this notion that it is cruel for working animals to work with people, exploitive for animals to uplift or entertain people.

  Given how little urban dwellers know about horses or how rarely they see them, it seems almost inevitable that they would come after the carriage horses. There is no concrete evidence that real estate development was the only reason for the campaign against the horses. The campaign marked the first time in modern American history that a big-city mayor was a member of an animal rights movement considered too extreme and militant for most animal lovers or for mainstream politics or politicians. The mayor, who admitted that he had no experience of any kind with animals, came to fully accept the logic and rhetoric of the animal rights movement in his city: it was cruel for horses to be in New York, work in New York, travel the congested streets of the city.

  He seemed to find the people in the carriage trade repugnant, outside of the moral community of good citizens. A self-declared populist and progressive, he refused to speak with any of the drivers or owners. He and his aides would not meet with them, lunch with them, visit them, or consider their arguments. He refused to worry about their jobs or respond to the continuous harassment the drivers faced in the city.

  De Blasio told one carriage driver who brought his young son to one of the mayor’s public appearances and who approached the mayor to ask him why he was seeking to ban the carriage trade that he thought the driver’s work was “immoral.” Historically, the carriage drivers were among the first members of the Teamsters Union, and the union went to bat for them when they were very much alone and in peril. The mayor was determined. The drama of the New York City carriage horses had just begun, for them and for me.

  I called Christina Hansen, a spokesperson for the carriage trade, and asked if I could come and see the horses for myself. Christina, a passionate lover of carriage horses, had given up an academic teaching position and a job as a horse carriage driver to come to New York and fight for the horses.

  She was quite open. She said I could go to the stables anytime I wanted and see anything I wanted. She didn’t sound like someone who was hiding something.

  I would talk to Christina often in the next couple of years, peppering her with questions. We sometimes argued about what I wrote, but she never once failed to respond to my questions, and in hundreds of interactions she never once told me a lie, distorted the truth, or covered up a single thing. I came to know her well and trust her. She was unwaveringly accurate and truthful.

  I wanted to write about the horses. I was drawn to the idea that domesticated animals were vanishing from the world, many at the hands of animal rights groups that believed it was exploitative to make them work for people.

  As someone who had lived with working animals—dogs, donkeys, horses, sheep—for years and written books about them, I believed the carria
ge horse story was important, and had enormous implications for animal lovers and the remaining animals in the world. New York City is America’s biggest stage in so many ways. If the horses could not stay there, then there would be very few places in urban and suburban America—where 90 percent of Americans now live—that they could remain. And then, there was this communication thing. I felt like I was being called to go there. I would soon understand that feeling in a deeper way

  Maria and I had inherited a pony when we moved into our new farm, but before that I had never had horses or written much about them. I didn’t grasp until later that the carriage horse issue was a very spiritual one for me, one that cut to the core of my philosophy about animals. I realized that everyone seemed to be talking about the horses, but no one was talking to them. And, very reluctantly, I came to realize that they were talking to me

  Hansen told me I could come to the stables anytime, day or night. I could come in and see any horse I wished, with or without advance notice.

  Maria and I boarded a train early one Saturday morning and traveled to New York, where we took a taxi to the Clinton Park Stables on West Fifty-Second Street and met Hansen and Stephen Malone, a veteran carriage driver and the son of Paddy Malone, one of the founders of the modern carriage trade.

  I am no equine authority, but I’ve been around horses and other animals for years, on my farm, in my travels, in my photography work, in my rural Upstate New York county. My wife and I were both somewhat shocked by what we saw in the city. The horses I met on this trip were calm and well groomed; many were lying down, something horses only do when they are truly relaxed.

  The stables were clean. The horses had room to turn around in their stalls. They had good hay and clean running water. There was heat in the winter, fans in the summer. The harnesses and tack were spotless; the animals were alert, friendly. The grain was carefully stored and well kept. There were no traces of mouse or rat feces.

  The horses showed none of the signs of abuse or neglect that are all too familiar to me or to any horse lover or equine vet—skittishness, unease around people, ears laid back, the whites of the eyes showing, sores, rough and dry coats. This impression was reinforced by a score of behaviorists, equine veterinarians, horse lovers, and trainers who, like me, came to New York to see the horses for themselves and unanimously found them to be healthy and well cared for. There is now a vast archive of studies, reports, findings, and observations about the New York carriage horses. They all say the same thing: the horses are the luckiest horses in the world.

  Looking around, we saw many drivers coming and going. They were especially affectionate to the horses, who seemed excited to go to work, eager to be harnessed, happy to come out of their stables, walk down the ramps, get hooked up to their carriages. These horses all exhibited the eagerness characteristic of working animals about to do their thing—I had seen it in other horses, in my border collies, in therapy dogs, Labs in the woods, donkeys guarding my sheep.

  I was surprised, but still wary. I had been a journalist for many years—the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe—including as an investigative and political and police reporter. I was viscerally suspicious of information given me, and I knew how to filter through it. I do not take anyone’s word for anything.

  Maybe this was a show put on for people like me? If the mayor of New York was so adamant about banning the horses, there must be something to it. And I had not been immune to all the ugly accusations: horses killed in traffic, horses endangering people, sick horses working until they died, lame horses, horses with sores, starving and freezing horses, overheated horses. I was prepared to see some sorry and pathetic animals, not these gracious, healthy, and very obviously well-cared-for and trusting draft horses.

  Anyone one who has been around animals for even a short period of time can easily spot abused animals: they are wary, disoriented, sluggish, often emaciated. Their coats and skin are a mess, their claws and hooves too long, their teeth untreated. They are highly suspicious of people and invariably either restless or lethargic. There is always some sign when an animal is abused. Visiting with these horses, I saw none.

  Abuse is a concept that has been so exploited and misunderstood that it almost has no real meaning anymore. Legally, an animal is abused when it suffers grievous injury or death as a result of human neglect or cruelty. Abuse is not an opinion on Facebook or something to be suddenly and arbitrarily defined in press conferences or on blogs.

  Whether the horses belong in the city or not, it is safe to say that they are not abused. They are treated as well and carefully as horses can be treated, far better than most horses in the world are treated.

  There is a carriage horse in New York named Spartacus who is much loved and cosseted by his driver, Tony. If you ask the other drivers about Tony and Spartacus, they will tell you that Tony sees Spartacus as a member of his family. Tony talks to his horse, sings to him, brushes and combs him, showers him with treats and kisses. The other drivers joke about Tony, about how he calls Spartacus his “baby” and dotes on him like a proud papa.

  One warm summer day in 2014, the carriage in which Spartacus was harnessed got tangled with another horse carriage and tipped over, causing Spartacus to fall to the ground, where he lay on his side. Hundreds of people were nearby; the scene was captured on smartphone cameras and shared all over the Internet. Several people who read my blog were present. As is often the case in accidents and other public dramas, many people were not sure how to understand what they were seeing. Many people had never seen an actual horse before, an animal familiar to them only through books, movies, and TV.

  When a horse in a harness falls over, horse people know what to do: how to be calm, to talk to the horse and keep him or her still, so that they can untangle the harness and get the horse on its feet safely.

  If a horse tangled in a harness gets to its feet too quickly, it can panic, break a leg, injure people nearby, lose its life. Grounded horses stay calm; high-strung horses can freak.

  If the rider or driver knows how to talk to his or her horse, then the outcome is usually good. He will get down next to the horse, stroke its neck or mane, talk to the animal quietly and gently, tell it to stay and be steady, keep the animal still until the harnesses can be removed and the horse can rise safely to its feet.

  Carriage horses are, by nature, among the most placid domesticated animals in the world. Although they are prey animals, they are famously calm under pressure, easy around other species, and very connected to their humans.

  Fortunately for Spartacus, Tony talked to him all the time. As the big black horse lay on his side, tangled in his harness, Tony lay on the ground, talked with him, stroked his neck and mane, told him to be still.

  It is upsetting for people to see a fallen horse, and the carriage drivers, long criticized by animal rights activists who believe the horses are being abused, knew there might be trouble. In New York City, hundreds of people are injured in motor vehicle accidents—many fatal and grievous—every single week, but such incidents rarely make the news. If a carriage horse stumbles or limps, it’s major news for weeks. The carriage drivers are well aware that every movement they make will be scrutinized, captured on cell phones or video cameras, seized upon by their critics.

  It took Tony and some other carriage drivers about two minutes to remove the harness and untangle it from the big horse. Then Tony told Spartacus to get up, which he did. He was taken back to the stables, pronounced fit by a police veterinarian, and then sent to a farm in New Jersey for a week so he could rest and be examined further. He was fine, and returned to work, where he works still in Central Park, with Tony.

  A number of animal rights groups predictably seized on the incident to argue that Spartacus and the other horses ought to be banned, the carriage trade shut down. They said it was cruel to force a horse to lie on the ground for so long. They alleged that Spartacus was forced to go back to work rather than get checked by a veterinarian. They said Spa
rtacus was spooked by a passing bus, and accused Tony of caring more about the harness than the horse. They assumed the care he and the other drivers took in removing the harness was an effort to save it at the expense of Spartacus. This accusation was widely reported and repeated for days in the media and online.

  These reports were untrue—I talked to police, witnesses, transit authority officials, carriage drivers—and caused Tony to burst into tears at the thought he would ever harm his beloved horse. (Tony pointed out that Spartacus, who feeds Tony and his family, is worth a lot more than the harness.) He said the people accusing him of cruelty had stolen his dreams, the dreams of an immigrant who came to America to live safely and be free.

  In a sane world, Tony would have been praised for his calm and quick response. He made sure Spartacus and the people around him did not panic and were not harmed in any way. As it was, he was reviled for days in the media and on the websites of several animal rights groups.

  We are living in a critical time for animals. Animals’ natural habitats are disappearing, demolished by human greed and development or by the growing ravages of climate change. Many animal rights organizations are demanding that the carriage horses and circus elephants and ponies in the farmer’s markets be returned to nature and to the wild, but there is now no nature for most of these animals to be returned to.

  Pope Francis speaks of the need for a new understanding of animals in his powerful encyclical, Laudato Si’, one of the most influential documents relating to the earth ever published:

  If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously.