Ethics Of Carriage Horses Debated After Horse Collapses In New York City

Some New Yorkers may have been shocked to see this last week a carriage horse collapsed in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.

While there have been debilitating heat waves in New York City recently, a spokesperson for the Transport Workers Union said the horse was actually diagnosed with a neurological infection that impaired its movement.

Carriage horses may have a soft spot in some peoples’ images of NYC due to their prevalence during dates in romantic comedy movies or other moments in New York films, but worsening conditions for these animals have led some to debate their place in the city in 2022.

In one video recorded by a witness, the 14-year-old horse, which is named Ryder, is seen on its knees still attached to the carriage. The driver in the video is heard yelling at the horse to get up and even begins hitting it.

The horse collapsed around W. 45th Street and 9th Avenue on the city’s West Side, and its carriage driver quickly alerted the police who shut down the block and began hosing it off with water and covering it with ice donated by nearby restaurants. An NYPD Mounted Unit officer was also on the scene, helping nurse the animal and also finding it a pillow.

Ryder was left in the care of police after the driver ceded control over the animal. Ryder was eventually transported to a trailer where he was taken to a veterinarian. The driver was left to pull Ryder’s carriage away by hand, with onlookers jeering at him as he had overworked the horse to the point of exhaustion in the first place.

Christina Hansen, a Transport Workers Union rep, said in a statement that the horse had a preliminary diagnosis of Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis. She claimed that the horse only stumbled because of “the neurological effects of the EPM,” which infects horses through possum droppings.

She also added that the video of officers spraying the horse was just “as a precaution, but they checked all of his vitals he had good temperature, good color in his gums and everything like that.”

Several advocacy groups are campaigning to have horse carriages modified, and one piece of legislation has been introduced in the City Council which would replace all horse-drawn carriages wtih electric vehicles by Summer 2024.