Demand City Council Ban Cruel Carriage Horse Industry
This is Bobby II Freedom, former NYC carriage horse rescued from slaughter in 2010 after his carriage driver owners cruelly decided to sell him at an auction once Bobby could no longer make them a profit. His facial scars are from years of ill-fitting tack and were much worse when he was first rescued. He has also suffered other health problems due to years of neglect. 
Most carriage horses are not so lucky—tens of thousands of urban carriage horses in the United States and around the world are scrapped for slaughter once they are used up and become too old or injured to pull carriages. New York City law offers zero protections for NYC carriage horses once they are sold off—horses can end up at slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico as Bobby would have had he not been saved from that brutal fate.
Today, Bobby is healthy and lives peacefully at Equine Advocates Sanctuary in Chatham, N.Y., in the company of other horses and with the freedom to graze, run, roll on the ground—all the natural behaviors he was denied in his previous life as a carriage horse. Friends of Animals’ Campaigns Director Edita Birnkrant visited Bobby on July 12. FoA helped fund the collaborative rescue and transport of Bobby to Equine Advocates.
FoA wants the rest of the more than 200 horses trapped in NYC’s dangerous and cruel horse-drawn carriage industry to be released and placed into waiting sanctuaries as Bobby has. Please contact your City Council member and Mayor De Blasio and urge them to make banning the carriage horse industry an urgent priority in the coming weeks.
These horses have endured enough misery—let’s get them out of the brutal summer heat, out of the chaotic traffic and hellish warehouse cells they are confined within and into sanctuaries where they can finally live in peace.
It’s time for de Blasio to make the carriage horse ban a priority. Friends of Animals is asking its New York members to contact the mayor and their City Council members and urge them to write and pass the legislation that would get carriage horses off city streets and onto sanctuaries where they can live free instead of as prisoners to this industry.
NYC Council Members can be reached here.
De Blasio can be reached by calling 311 or 212-NEW-YORK
You can also consider donating to Equine Advocate Sanctuary to help them care for these horses. Check out their website here.