Don't Get Taken For A Ride

• Accidents:  Horse-drawn carriages are often struck by vehicles, resulting in severe injuries or death to horses, drivers, passengers and passers-by.  While pulling carriages, horses easily become frightened and race into traffic or onto sidewalks, resulting in injuries or death.  Often veterinary care is refused by carriage owners for horses' injuries.
   

• Working Conditions:  Horses are subjected to Florida's blistering heat and humidity, hot and hard pavement, traffic congestion, exhaust fumes, constant exposure to the sun, long hours, inadequate amount of rest, and little or no water.
   

• Stalls or Other Confining Conditions:  Horses enslaved by the carriage industry often return from a treacherous day's work to filthy hard floors without clean bedding, no access to pasture, and inadequate food or water.  They are prevented from socializing with each other and are often tied to poles.
   

• Equipment:  Ill-fitting harnesses cause skin sores, bone bruising, neck shoulder and back problems.  Cruel bits cause painful mouth, teeth and gum problems.  Infrequent horseshoeing causes chronic pain, hoof deterioration and aggravation of other musculoskeletal injuries and conditions.
   

• Deadly Heat Stress:  Horses' lives are jeopardized when they cannot cool themselves.  The dangerous effect of high temperature and humidity is magnified by pavement temperature that is often 50 degrees hotter than the air.  A horse's ability to sweat actually collapses as the combined heat and humidity often exceeds 150 degrees during the hot summer months.
   

• Health Problems:  Infrequent and inadequate veterinary examinations, unrelieved acute and chronic pain, malnutrition, life-threatening dehydration, lung diseases and infections, and hoof, leg, hip, shoulder, neck and back problems are all a painful reality for horses in the carriage industry.

What You Can Do

Contact your government officials.  Urge them to ban carriage horse rides in your community.

If you see a carriage horse in distress, contact the police department, animal control, and the humane society.