Talking to Animals

by Jon Katz

  Saving the animals means reawakening to the idea of them as precious and individual creatures. If we do not know them, we cannot save them. If we do not learn to understand them and communicate with them, we cannot learn how to treat them and discover what it is they really want and need.

  The animals of the world have been betrayed by the very people who claim to speak for their rights. Soon the horses and the elephants and the ponies will be gone from the world, and our children and grandchildren will ask why they were driven off and where they have gone.

  We cannot keep killing animals, hiding them away, putting them in danger in the name of saving them and loving them. It is urgent that the people making decisions about the future of animals know something about them, and can communicate with them. The stakes could not be any higher.

  Lucky, Stanley and Julius, Orson, Elvis, Flo, and the carriage horses and the donkeys and sheep have all led me, step by step, to this new understanding, this new way of looking at animals and talking to them and listening to them. It has been a journey of a thousand steps. I remember Lucky telling me for the first time that I was safe, and could be loved, and could love, and could be strong. I remember him telling me how little he needed or wanted, just a kid to attach to, a need to fill, a wound to heal.

  I remember listening to Orson, and hearing his plea for relief, relayed to me and repeated by a shamanic healer with a gift for talking to animals.

  And I remember Elvis telling me how much his legs hurt, how they could no longer carry all of his great weight, how he could no longer navigate the slick and icy hills of his pasture in the winter. You have to go, I told him, and he saw it, that it was his destiny, his purpose.

  I remember Simon the donkey showing me how much he had loved the poor farmer who starved him and left him for dead, how he set out to teach me what compassion was and what it meant. He showed me that he forgave the farmer for nearly killing him, and bore no grudges, did not know what it was to hate, and in this way he showed me the spiritual power of animals.

  I remember Winston the II, a young rooster who nearly killed his gentle father; how I closed my eyes and visualized my sadness and how he showed me his rage and fury, and I knew I had to point the rifle at him and shoot him through the head. Harsh as it sounds, that is the real life of real animals. And the real life of the farm.

  I talked with Rocky, our old blind pony, and he showed me the pain and fatigue and suffering in his old bones, and he told me very clearly that he no longer had the energy to deal with his daily life and was ready to go, and needed to go.

  I recall Susie, our sweet old ewe, telling me she was eager to give birth, healthy and ready to live with her offspring. So it was.

  I saw that animals do not know or fear death as we do; they accept the limitations of their lives. They live as long as they can, they understand when it is time for them to leave, and they do so uncomplainingly and without regret or recrimination. This is the gift we can offer them, one we cannot often offer ourselves or our loved ones. We can help them leave the world in a loving and painless and dignified way.

  If we would only open our eyes and learn, they would teach us how.

  Animals are calling us to a new awakening, a new understanding of their rights and of ours. Instead of lobbying to banish animals from people, we must find ways to keep them. Instead of making it more difficult for animals to be with people—especially the poor, the working people, the elderly—we must make it easier.

  Animals are a precious resource, like water and forests. They must never be banned without a clear understanding of where they will go, who will care for them, and who will pay for that care. Instead of intimidating, threatening, and harassing people who love animals and live with them we must find ways to help people keep them and care for them well.

  Animal abuse is an awful thing, but the elimination of animals from the lives of people, and, eventually, from the earth itself, is worse.

  Understanding animals also means understanding people, because animals cannot survive in the world without them.

  I think of Tawni Angel in California, whose license to give pony rides to delighted children was taken from her because animal rights protestors decided it was torture for ponies to have to give rides to children. Two different police investigations found otherwise, but that didn’t seem to matter. Tawni is struggling to survive and find a way to keep her ponies with her.

  I think of Sarah L., a lonely eighty-two-year-old woman whose five feral cats were taken away from her suburban New Jersey home in a police van because secret informers reported they were living outside her trailer. The cats, she said, were her very life. She is lost without them.

  I think of Harold, a draft horse put down in Southern California because his owner could no longer find work for the animal in movies. The film producers told him it was not worth the trouble of using animals in movies anymore. They were tired of fighting the accusations of cruelty and abuse.

  I think of the farmer in Upstate New York, reported to the police by passersby who saw his cows standing out in the snow during a storm. Police seized his cows; his legal fees and boarding costs forced him to sell his farm. His cows were never returned.

  I think of the homeless man in Manhattan whose dog was taken from him by the police and euthanized because a passerby saw an untreated sore on the dog’s back. The dog had lived with his human for ten years. They were the whole world to one another.

  The list grows and grows: the pony, the horses, the dogs and cats, one after the other, taken from the world, banned, killed, taken to preserves away from their people and lives and work.

  Talking to animals means saving them. If they can tell us what they want and need, perhaps they can be spared the fate of having hapless and misguided human beings decide their fate. There is no more basic right for any animal than the right to survive.

  One day in 2014, I decided to experience a carriage ride for myself and take my new friend, Ariel, up on his offer to treat me and my wife, Maria, to one of his famed midnight rides. We walked to Central Park just before midnight on a balmy evening in early spring. The night was clear, the temperature in the fifties. There were a handful of carriage horses lined up on the southern edge of the park.

  Ariel was waiting for us. He is one of those people who love to give other people gifts and bring them pleasure; it just lights him up. He had invited Maria and me on a midnight carriage ride in part to thank me for writing in support of the carriage horses.

  Ariel asked us if we were ready, made sure we had blankets, and then we headed out into the beautiful night. He handed us a bag of fruit, some bottles of water. I had been in the park many times, but Maria and I had never seen it like this, free of the rushing traffic, bicyclists, joggers, and pedicabs that pour through it every day.

  The park was still. Rebecca’s clip-clopping echoed off the big trees, their shadows enveloping us. The park was designed in large part for the horses. They have walked in it every day of its existence, since it was built in 1851. Olmsted insisted that the park be designed so that the horses and the people of the city could see one another, pass by one another. That night, I could see very clearly that the horses were the most natural thing in this beautiful space—it was the trucks and cars and pedicabs that were out of place, day or night.

  Ariel took us through the park, past the big old streetlamps, to the beautiful fountains, and some hidden lakes and spaces we had never seen before. He stopped to light candles for us in the back of his cab. When we approached Strawberry Fields, an area of the park dedicated to the memory of John Lennon, who lived, and was killed, just across the street, a young man startled us by hopping into the carriage and playing Beethoven on his violin for the next twenty minutes. It turns out that Ariel had hired the young music student to entertain us.

  The park is eerily beautiful after midnight, quiet and restful, so different than during the crowded days. The clip-clop of the horses is loud and distinct, the fountains a musical roar, t
he leaves rustling peacefully in the quiet.

  Ariel knows all the nooks and crannies of the park. Once or twice, he stopped the carriage and walked us down a path and into the woods, the sky suddenly opening up onto a stunningly beautiful city skyline. As we were nearing the end of the ride, Ariel turned toward Maria and me and tossed rose petals onto our laps. He then sang several songs he had written.

  The two hours we spent riding through the park was a wonderful token of gratitude for my support, but the message behind the carriage ride was much more powerful. Ariel offered us a trip into the past; more than just a ride through the park, the experience evoked the thousands of years that horses and human beings have been living and working together.

  For me, the ride confirmed that horses belong in New York, that it’s their park, too.

  Whenever I contemplate what a new and more mystical understanding of animals could look like, I always think of the horses and of that magical midnight ride. Any true understanding of spirituality means thinking deeply about what we mean by nature, what we mean by living with animals. Just as peace means much more than the absence of war, treating animals well means so much more than hiding them away from people on rescue farms.

  Spirituality is reflected in a lifestyle that is balanced, that leaves us with a capacity for love and wonder. The carriage horses speak to us of love and wonder, but how can we hear them amid constant noise, interminable and jarring distractions, in a life bounded by greed and worry and political conflict?

  A balanced life is a life in harmony with nature, with animals, with inner peace and strength. That is what I felt in Ariel’s carriage, what I feel when I stand with the horses, when I visit them in the stables. It is an attitude of the heart, one that appreciates animals with a serene and open attentiveness, that is capable of being fully present. Jesus invited human beings to contemplate the lilies of the field and the birds in the air; animals like the carriage horses can show us how to overcome the anxiety and alarm that plague us and can make our world angry, superficial, aggressive, and wasteful. We love animals because they offer us love and affection, they can’t argue with or contradict us, they don’t care what we wear or look like, they are reliably loyal and affectionate. In our fragmented and contentious world, that is important work. In fact, it is the new work of dogs.

  It was a great gift to see that my love for journalism still lived inside me and could now be applied to my other love—communicating with animals. These disparate worlds of mine—my past, my present, my passions, my blog, my farm—all suddenly came together. I could tell the stories were having an impact, I started to get large numbers of messages saying, “Thanks for making me think.” Sweet noise to any writer.

  One day I got a telephone call from Pamela Rickenbach, the cofounder of Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse sanctuary and retirement home in Palmer, Massachusetts. I had talked to Pamela about the carriage horses and how they were speaking to me, urging me on in writing their story, and we had become friends. I told her I was mystified by the horses’ messages. Pamela told me she had shared my writing with a much loved and respected Sioux spiritual leader, Chief Arvol Looking Horse. He was, she said, the Dalai Lama of the Sioux Nation. Chief Arvol rarely asked to meet people outside of his own world, Pamela said, excited, but he had read my work in support of the horses and wished to meet with me when he came to Central Park that summer to speak at the United Nations on behalf of world peace. I was flattered and humbled.

  So, Maria and I went to New York City on a warm summer day to meet with the spiritual leader of the Horse Nation.

  Chief Arvol, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle, looked the part of a Native American chief. I could easily envision his image etched on the rocky façade of a mountain. He was imposing, tall, and handsome, with long braids and a weathered face. He wore a beautiful and colorful embroidered shirt.

  We ordered sandwiches and falafel from a nearby stand and went to find a place to sit. Chief Arvol is so charismatic a figure that people in the park stopped to stare at us; some even sat down in a circle around us, to watch and listen.

  Chief Arvol and I talked for nearly an hour. He told me that the horses were indeed speaking to me, that they had prayed for me to tell their story. In the Native American culture, he said, people spoke with horses all the time. Their culture respected the sacred and ancient bond between people and animals.

  In Western culture, he said, that bond had been forgotten; people had lost respect for the partnership between people and animals and were driving the animals away.

  It’s hard for me to understand how the horses can be guiding me, I said.

  You don’t have to understand, he said, you just have to accept it. And you are accepting it, he said. I can see it in your writing.

  I took the Chief’s advice. I stopped resisting the idea that the horses were talking to me, and just accepted it. I kept writing.

  To be honest, I could not have stopped if I wanted to. It seemed that this was a calling for me, a chance to expand my writing about animals and communicating with them in the most important way and for the best reasons; a chance, too, to call upon the investigative and reporting skills I had learned working at some of the best newspapers in America, a chance to use my blog platform for a good cause; a chance, I believed, to try to help correct a great injustice.

  Chief Arvol said the fate of the carriage horses was more important than the people in New York realized. The horses were the symbols and representatives of Mother Earth. If they were taken from the city, he warned, they would take the wind and rain and fire with them. The world was at a crossroads, he said. People would either learn to live in harmony or perish together on a desecrated planet.

  I believed him. After that day in Central Park, I had no doubt about it.

  I honestly don’t know what impact my writing had on the struggle to save the horses in New York City, but I do think I was able to give the disheartened drivers some hope and support. When I go to New York City and walk in the park, the drivers always greet me, shout out to me, thank me. I have received thousands of messages from people all over the country, saying they view the horses in a different way, that they now understand there are many complex issues surrounding the future of animals in our world.

  I believe I’ve helped some people understand that all animals are not pets; they are not fur babies. Domesticated working animals need to work. Saving animals does not mean confining them to often impoverished and struggling rescue farms. It means understanding their true natures and helping to keep them in our everyday world, rather than taking them away from people, who will otherwise never lay eyes upon them again.

  As it happened, the mayor and the animal rights organizations seeking to ban the horses failed. There was overwhelming opposition to the notion that the horses were being abused or should be banned. The mayor did not ban the horses on “day one,” or in his first week, or even after day five hundred. At the end of a long and bitter effort over a year and a half to rally support in the City Council and the public for banning the horses, it was clear the mayor and his allies had failed miserably.

  There were not even enough votes to get the ban-the-horses bill out of the City Council’s Transportation Committee. A second effort to resolve the carriage trade conflict also failed in the winter of 2016, when the mayor unsuccessfully introduced legislation to restrict the carriage trade and move the horses into a renovated building in Central Park.

  But this is not a happy ending, and there probably isn’t one. Carriage drivers continue to be targeted and mercilessly harassed. Tourists who seek a carriage ride and their children are often taunted, called murderers and Nazis. It is not uncommon for parents to flee the carriages, rushing away with crying children who have been accused of murdering animals. The mayor still promises to ban the horses as soon as he can figure out how to do it.

  The forces threatening the horses are enormous. They include the mayor, real estate developers,
and fanatic animal rights activists who seem beyond reason or learning or empathy. Many people in the carriage trade have already decided to get out. The carriage trade no longer represents the American Dream for them or their children. So many of the immigrants who work in the carriage trade came to America to look for lives of freedom and meaning, and sadly, they see no long-term future now for themselves or their families. The city could so easily commit to keeping them there, but instead, the government seems committed to driving them away, and perhaps Chief Arvol’s fearful prophecy will come true in New York.

  I think he is right. Our Western culture has forgotten the long and precious history that people and animals have. If the horses leave, they will take the wind and rain with them. And much of the magic.

  I thank the horses. They gave me a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals than I ever had, or ever imagined having. As Pope Francis has suggested, we are at a crossroads when it comes to animals. We can keep pushing them out of our cities and populated communities under the guise of protecting them from abuse, or we can begin understanding their true needs and look for ways to keep them among us. We can turn their fates and futures over to people who seem to know nothing about them, or we can reclaim the right to speak for the real needs of real animals in the real world. We can continue to use animals as a battering ram against human beings, or we can learn to respect people and animals both and help them to life safely and well together.

  When someone asks me what the carriage horse controversy is truly about, I say it isn’t about real estate or animal welfare or traffic safety. It’s about an attitude of the heart. The animals need us. Their most elemental right is the right to survive on the earth, and our most elemental task is to understand them well enough to know how to make that happen.

  If we ask them, they will tell us.