You Cannot Not Know What You Know

I still can't get it out of my head, the thing I didn't mention in my earlier post about Central Park.  By the time I sat down to write that post, I was so happy to have been there that I didn't want to spoil my mood by thinking about it.  About what?  Horse drawn carriages.

They were the first thing I saw when I got to Central Park.  There were a dozen at least.  My first reaction was (as always when I see an animal) a delighted: "Horses!"  I want to go and stroke their long faces and feel their soft muzzles.  The next instant I remember that the horse-drawn carriage trade is rife with cruelty.  Here are fifteen reasons why:  http://www.banhdc.org/archives/ch-fact-reasons-6-4-11.shtml

I won't repeat them here, but I hope you will check it out (and sign the petition at http://www.banhdc.org/petition.shtml).  The thing for me is - I know the facts now.   I could see the truth of them for myself as I watched the horses in Central Park.  Almost every horse pulled its load with a stiffened gait, its hind legs strained.  One horse limped.  Only one horse seemed to have any spirit left.  The others simply plodded along, looking defeated and downcast.

Years ago though, I didn't know anything about the horse carriage trade, and so I went on a horse-drawn carriage ride.  It was my older daughter's thirteenth birthday.  My husband and I had taken her, her sister, and her two best friends out for dinner in Denver and to see the holiday lights.  Then we saw the carriages, and it seemed like taking a ride was a great idea.  It was fine for us, sitting in the carriage all bundled up against the cold and frosty night air.

I hadn't given much thought back then to how the horse felt about pulling heavy carriages for hours and hours every day and night in all kinds of weather, yoked and laden, walking only on asphalt instead of running through grassy fields.  Now I cannot help but think of how the horse feels, how any animal must feel, as we use them for our purposes instead of leaving them to their own purposes, their own lives.

Since that carriage ride 17 years ago, I learned about the horse carriage trade and the toll it takes on animals.  Once you know a thing, you cannot not know it.   You can only decide who you are and what you will or will not do in the face of what you know.  Given what I know about the horse carriage trade,  I did not ride in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park; my days of riding in a horse-drawn carriage are done.