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COLUMN SIX: A horse that won't run

BY COLIN BREZICKI Special to the VOICE U ntil I encountered the protesters in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I had no idea what speciesism was. Or that I was guilty of it.
NOTL_carriages
A horse-drawn carriage sets out in Niagara-on-the-Lake. BACKYARD PRODUCTIONS PHOTO

BY COLIN BREZICKI Special to the VOICE

Until I encountered the protesters in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I had no idea what speciesism was. Or that I was guilty of it.

It’s a difficult word to say, even when sober, and some might find its meaning hard to swallow as well. Basically, if you’re a speciesist you assign different rights and values to individuals according to their species. You therefore deny the principle that all creatures great and small, including humans, are created equal.

Shame on us for being elitist.

The protestors are members of AWFAN—At War For Animals Niagara—and NAFA— Niagara Action For Animals—and their goal is to eliminate the “exploitation of all sentient beings for financial gain.”

Locally, they have Sentineal Carriages in their crosshairs, a company that makes horses pull wagonloads of tourists for profit.

According to AWFAN, the animals have not agreed to take part in this activity. Their hoofs get very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. The horses could be doing other things all day, like standing in a field. Instead, they become brain dead listening to stories on a loop about 1812, the apothecary shop, and the recently restored gazebo by the lake that was donated to the town after a film shoot.

For its part Sentineal Carriages insists that the tourists are lightweight, the carriage has wheels, the roads are flat and the pace is slow. They add that hoofs have no feeling (you hear nary a neigh from the beasts when their shoes get nailed in), the horses are well fed and hydrated, they are tucked up each night and feel good about themselves after a day’s workout.

And they escape the abattoir. Without the efforts of Sentineal, apparently, and the Ontario Livestock Exchange program, these horses would be shipped off to Paris and served up as the chef’s special at Cheval Bleu.

Sentineal claim they hire only drivers who adore animals and know how to treat them. Staff are known to stay up all night to nurse any horse that gets sick—the company was actually commended by Guelph University for the care given to a horse laid up with Potomac fever.

By law, Sentineal must produce each year a letter from a vet to confirm that living and working conditions are up to scratch, that the animals are in good health, and they are read to at night before lights out.

The protesters are law-abiding too: they’re civil to the public, they observe the dress code and spellcheck their banners. So, really, it’s a storm in a teacup.

But maybe there’s a larger picture.

Despite being a speciesist I don’t have much to do with animals, apart from owning a cat. Okay, I look after a cat who chooses to live with me on equal terms. I feed him top-grade food purchased from a vet who checks him out and gives him his vaccines once a year. I have to accompany him to the vet because he can’t drive and has no money. Two years ago I spent close to a grand having his teeth fixed. He’s free to wander outside but, being environmentally aware, he always comes home to poop in his tray and not in anyone’s garden.

In some ways I feel superior to him, having opposable thumbs that enable me to use a can opener. In other ways, not so much.

Exploiting a cat is out of the question. I mean, we don’t race them or hold cat rodeos. We can’t train them to sniff out guns or drugs, or to act as guides for people with impaired vision. We don’t eat them or wear their fur or harness them to small carriages.

They’re cats. That’s all they do.

Anyway, my cat is the sum of my animal interaction. I don’t attend horse races, or rodeos, and I don’t visit zoos or aquariums because they make me uncomfortable. I never took my daughter to Marineland. We did tour the Butterfly Centre once and, despite the humidity, quite enjoyed it. The butterflies looked happy enough too, maybe in part because birds, lizards, snakes and other creatures that would gulp them down in an instant are not permitted entry.

Now here’s the kicker: I freely admit that my discomfort with most kinds of animal “exploitation” has developed over time largely because of animal rights activists.

There are over one hundred organizations worldwide, and though I wouldn’t equate their work with that of Martin Luther King Jr. or Nellie McLung or Harvey Milk, I believe they are essential to a civilized society. While man’s inhumanity to man is, for me at least, more profoundly tragic than his inhumanity to animals, I regard animal cruelty as indefensible, and fully endorse the severe penalties against it.

For all their good work much remains to be done. Regarding horses in particular, I think of all the legal activities that daily result in crippling injury and death. Eighty-seven animals have died during the Calgary Stampede in the past 30 years, figures that exclude casualties among the thousands of animals used in practice and training behind the scenes. The Grand National Steeplechase in England has averaged one fatality a year since 1988— seventeen horses died while racing and training at Saratoga Springs in 2017 alone —and Federal Equestrian Institute figures show a steady increase in horse mishaps, injuries and fatalities as event courses become more challenging.

Protesters face angry resistance. The Fraser Valley Animal Rights Association claims that multiple threats of violence were made against them this month as they planned a rally at the Chilliwack, B.C. rodeo. These activists, by the way, oppose animal abuse, and not speciesism—the responsible involvement of animals in entertainment, industry and sport is not an issue for them.

I admire activists who campaign tooth and nail to counter oppression, homophobia, racism and misogyny. Same with those who promote pluralism, diversity, tolerance and free speech. And right up there are animal rights activists who would eradicate the abuse of living creatures that we own, hunt, ride, view, eat and wear, bearing in mind that humans will continue to own, hunt, ride, view, eat and wear them.

Sentineal Carriages, on the other hand, are dealing with activists who challenge our right to interact with all animals as “partners or resources” no matter how humanely we do it.

It’s an argument Sentineal can never win, simply because the company is being called out by those who claim the high moral ground. They are thought to be better human beings than those benighted tourists who sit up there in upholstered seats, all snug and toasty under their blankets, while that poor horse in front plods its weary path, freezing its hoofs off and thinking death can’t come too soon.

The late Bernard Levin once observed that ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand because they believe it makes them invisible—the fact that many humans think this is why they do it tells us more about humans than ostriches.

Sometimes it's important to know when to stop arguing with people, and simply let them be wrong.