NYC Carriage Horse Autopsy: ‘Severe Pain’ at Time of Death
To see the image of Charlie — the white carriage horse who dropped dead on 54th Street after weeks of choking on taxi exhaust while transporting Midwesterners to various locations around a park they were incapable of maneuvering through the use of their own, atrophied jelly-legs — was to have your heart break.
Charlie, who was remembered in a candlelight vigil on Friday, was found to have a “pronounced, chronic ulceration of the stomach.” The cause of death is still undetermined, but that condition would have meant almost certainly that Charlie was in severe pain at the time of his death.
“We are very concerned that Charlie was forced to work in spite of painful maladies,” said Dr. Pamela Corey, director of equine veterinary services for the ASPCA’s humane law enforcement department. “And these particular health issues can be difficult to diagnose because draft horses are by nature a stoic breed, not displaying signs of pain until they are very severe.”
Click on photo for more
After the controversial death of a carriaige horse in the middle of a busy street, New York City Mayor Micheal Bloomberg took to the airwaves to back the industry up.
When asked about the latest tragedy, Bloomberg expressed his support for the abusive carriage horse industry saying the animals “probably wouldn’t be alive if they didn’t have jobs.” Adding insult to injury, he went on to say that carriage horses are “part of New York’s heritage” to which the Gothamist adds “sort of like poisoned milk and bed bugs.”
The Mayor feels that horses exist only to be made into glue, sold for meat, or pull tourists around New York streets. This won’t help his already plummeting approval rating which has fallen 13 percent in the last 30 days.
