Horse-drawn carriage rides

[sikax]

New York City does them. My city does them. I'm assuming other big cities do, too. How do you feel? Is it animal cruelty? Some people are trying to ban them in New York. I've seen the stables where the horses are kept in my city and they seem like nice facilities. I guess the problem is the labor, walking over concrete and whatnot. This is PETA's article about them: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-e ... carriages/

The big one for me I guess is the fumes/pollution. But then, humans are breathing the same shit. And every other living thing in the city. Is a horse trotting around a few city blocks really a big deal? They're getting exercise, anyway.

[CashRules]

PETA is a terrorist organization and membership should be sufficient grounds for a life prison sentence. But horses shouldn't spend a lot of time walking on concrete. How much time each individual horse actually spends on concrete would be an important fact to know.

[Gendo]

As a general rule, if PETA is against it, I'm all for it.

[sikax]

Hmm...I estimate in Sacramento from what I see there are about half a dozen horses in operation at any given time. Likely a handful of back-ups. And they change shifts frequently, probably having days off as well. And on weekends it gets busier and the hours go longer. Each ride around the Old Town lasts maybe half an hour. So let's say during a weekday each horse does two or three half-hour trips, with breaks in between. And on weekends I assume that number doubles. So in a given week that'd be roughly ten hours a week of walking per horse. I have no idea if that's a lot or not for a horse to handle.

[CashRules]

That sounds about right. When ten hours a week gets to be too much for them they'll end up in a French supermarket.

[Ptolemy_Banana]

What Gendo said.