10/23/2026
I’m a horse trainer. I make my living working with horses, and there’s something I wish more people would understand before celebrating the decision to ban horse carriages in New York City.
I ride a lot of horses. Colts, problem horses, horses that need a foundation and horses that need somebody to give them another chance.
But you know what I hardly ever get in to ride?
Draft horses.
These horses were bred for generations to pull. To work alongside people. They helped plow our fields, haul our freight, and build the world we live in. And as that world has changed, we’ve steadily taken away the places where they fit.
Now we’re taking away another one.
That ought to make us stop and ask a harder question: What future are we actually providing for them?
Because saying, “They can go to a sanctuary,” is easy.
Providing the land, hay, hoof care, veterinary care, and daily attention for the rest of a horse’s life is something else entirely. Especially a horse that size.
A sanctuary isn’t an endless pasture with an unlimited bank account. Somebody has to pay the bills. Somebody has to fix the fence, fill the water trough, and show up when that horse gets sick.
If sanctuary placement is your answer, show us the available stalls. Show us the funding. Show us who is responsible ten or twenty years from now.
These horses deserve a plan that lasts longer than the celebration over passing a ban.
And yes, we should demand good treatment. A horse that is lame, sick, overheated, or unfit for the job should not be working. There should be real standards and real consequences for neglect.
I work with horses. Their well-being matters to me every single day.
But I also know that a horse pulling a carriage does not, by itself, tell you whether that horse is being mistreated. You have to look at the animal, the workload, the conditions, and the care.
My fear goes beyond New York City. Every time we eliminate another responsible use for these horses, we need to consider what replaces it. Fewer opportunities can mean fewer people willing or able to keep them, train them, and preserve their breeds.
They don’t have to disappear overnight for us to lose them. They can disappear from everyday life a little at a time.
And there’s a contradiction here that bothers me.
We’ll watch fifty acres of open ground get stripped bare and covered in concrete for another shopping center or fast-food restaurant, and call it progress. But a horse working alongside a person becomes something we can’t tolerate.
Where, exactly, are the horses supposed to go when we keep removing both their work and their land?
And before we judge every working horse from an apartment window, we ought to examine our own choices. If we can justify keeping a dog in a kennel for hours around our work schedule, we should at least be willing to learn about a working horse’s life before deciding we understand it.
Compassion carries responsibility. If you support removing these horses from their jobs, help provide their future. Fund their care. Protect land. Support the people preserving them.
I don’t want our children’s only connection to a draft horse to be a picture in a history book or an animal behind an exhibit fence.
I don’t want them asking, “Why don’t we see those horses anymore?”
And I sure don’t want our answer to be:
“We thought we were helping. We just never thought far enough ahead to make room for them.”
These horses helped build our world.
The least we can do is make sure they still have a place in it.
