Carriage horses always make me sad. Whenever I think about horses, I think wide open spaces. I think herds of wild horses, thundering across the plains. I don’t think of bridles and saddles and pulling carriages of fat tourists through a paved park.
It seems like such an undignified way to treat one of the most majestic animals of North America. It’s almost as bad as those people that “train” bears to play hockey by beating them repeatedly until they get it.
It’s never enough just to use an animal for service or nourishment or other true necessities. We have to subjugate it, too. Just to prove we can.
Ugh.