Horse carriages are and have been a remnant of the past for the last 70 years.

From 1950's on, technology took our ways of traveling into new ages. Cars, trains etc were all optimized. 

To put horses in noisy and fast-living city environments to pull carriages full of tourists is unnatural and dangerous for them. In today’s western world this is just pure exploitation and animal cruelty.

Horses have to stand around and wait for hours at the time in any weather without the ability to move around, lay down, nozzle each other, let alone play with each other.

As prey animals they have the natural reflex to flee when they perceive danger.

We however force them to pull tourists in carriages through cities where poor horse have to walk and trot on concrete and asphalt. It’s everything but a natural habit with cars, bikes, fumes they must inhale, smog, lights, sounds, noises etc that startle and scare them.

They have to wear blinds so they can’t see all the things that normally would be frighting to them. That in itself acknowledges that horses shouldn’t be made to live and work in our cities.

Countless accidents happen all over the world.

Horses run off startled by something and get hit by cars or hurt themselves otherwise. Heat, cold, stress, not enough water or/and food and being overworked till they have no strength, finally takes its toll and leaves horses lying in the streets badly injured or dead on the spot.

In 2016 there was an accident involving the horses in Stanley Park. A horn startled the horses and they ran off pulling the carriage with tourists over grass and tree areas, ramming a wooden park bench before they could be calmed and stopped.

Many people jumped of the carriage and some had minor injuries but the whole incident could have ended way different for horses and humans if they had f.e collided with a tree or tried to jump into the ocean.

If one person would have been seriously hurt or a horse killed, horse carriages very likely would have been banned.

As it was the Vancouver Park Board talked about banning horse carriages but didn’t pull through. So the horses have to keep on pulling.

Why does it seem that always something bad has to happen first, before something happens?

Help horses by signing the petition to ban horse labour in Vancouver.