Horse hockey

(image credit: flickr.com/photos/daniel_julier)

"Tourists love to view the Colosseum and other famous landmarks in Rome from the back of a horse-drawn carriage but animal rights activists said Tuesday it's time to ban the practice.

"Traffic, pollution, heat and heavy carriages expose the horses to health risks, the activists said, adding that the animals rest in dark and humid stables.

"'They are in disastrous condition, forced to work in an urban environment and exposed to a million dangers,' said Claudio Locuratolo, one of the 1,700 volunteers of ENPA, an association of activists who patrol the streets to monitor the horses' condition."

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Okay. Disclosure. I'm a lifelong animal lover. I not-so-secretly encourage some of Greenpeace's zanier antics to try and preserve the lives of whales, harp seals, marine life in general, and efforts to save rhinoceroses, tigers, and any other animal endangered by the stupidity and greed of mankind.

But this is ridiculous.

Horses have been mankind's partner in life since the first indigenous populations learned each could benefit the other. Humans learned they could get around faster, and travel further, on horseback, while horses learned that they would have continuous access to food and care of their health, leading to a longer life. The superb musculature of horses could handle just about any demand -- hauling things, carrying things, traveling long distances. In fact, horses began living longer and longer, in service with humans.

Fast-forward to the Industrial Revolution. Could it have been achieved without horses? Witness the canals, on which crucial supplies on barges were dragged by horse and mule. Witness farms, who produced the food the Industrial Revolutionaries depended, in larger numbers. Witness any number of services in towns and cities, like delivery of milk, produce, dry goods and clothing, not to mention cab service.

Without horses, we would not be typing on the very computers we use today. And you don't hear them complaining.

Would horses prefer to gallivant around fields all day, without being harnessed and asked to use their splendid strength? Sure. So would anyone. But horses served a complementary function alongside man's evolution, and they've served us well. In turn, with few exceptions, we've served them well, and the world has advanced through this partnership.

Pollution, shmollution. These hand-wringers should have seen what 19th-century horses went through in, say, London, or New York. Pollution was far worse, in terms of coal-smoke output, lack of sewage, cobblestone streets (which damaged horses' hooves, had their human partners not paid blacksmiths a pretty penny to keep them in trim).

Today's carriage-pullers are well-equipped to handle man-made pathogens and other "indignities." Their stables are paradises, compared with what horses put up with as recently as the Great Depression. Just read anything by James Herriott, who wrote "All Creatures Great and Small."

Messing with tradition -- horse-drawn carriages -- is an exercise in PC stupidity.