The images of the animal being abused by its owner after it had just collapsed in the street shocked social networks. The New York police intervened to refresh him.
In New York, the debate about the ban on tourist carriages is rekindled. On Wednesday, August 10, at a temperature of 30 degrees, a 14-year-old horse named Ryder collapsed on the streets of the American megalopolis. The scene, which was filmed and massively shared on social networks, shocked many Americans and netizens.
It all starts with the horse attached to a carriage collapsing on the street in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. The driver of the vehicle gets out and tries to straighten the animal. He shakes his reins vigorously and yells, “Get up! Stand up!”. But faced with Ryder’s uneasiness in not recovering, the driver is forced to leave him on the road.
Ice cubes and a jet of water for refreshment
The New York Police Department is contacted. Once on the scene, police began watering the horse with a hose and also gave him ice, thinking his discomfort was due to the scorching temperatures. A large crowd gathers around the crime scene, and some local residents hide their astonishment at the presence of this animal in the middle of such a noisy and excited city as New York.
Almost an hour after his fall, Ryder finally got up to cheers from the crowd. He is eventually taken to a private stable and examined by a veterinarian. He revealed that the animal was likely suffering from equine protozoal myeloencephalitis, a neurological infection that can cause animals to become unbalanced.
“It wasn’t the heat, it wasn’t the fatigue, it wasn’t the overwork,” Metro defended Pete Donohue, a spokesman for the union representing the new horse-drawn carriage porters, in the columns.
“Horses have no place in big cities”
For him, Ryder would have achieved even better living conditions as a carriage horse in New York. He used to work on an Amish farm where he had to walk 50 km a day.
“If he wasn’t in the carriage business, he could be dead by now,” said Pete Donohue.
Statements that failed to convince supporters of a ban on this tourist practice on the streets of New York have already been scalded by several similar incidents. Speaking on NBC New York, Edita Birnkrant, associate director of NYCLASS, an organization campaigning to end horse-drawn carriages, said, “We call on the city council, the mayor, to ban this disgusting animal abuse.”
For its part, PETA, an animal rights organization, tweeted that “horses have no place in big cities where they are constantly in danger from cars, people or even the weather.”