Thank you for your interest in protecting horses who are forced to pull carriages.

What may seem like a “nostalgic,” “romantic” or “fun” ride on a horse-drawn carriage is anything but for the horse forced to pull the carriage. Horse-drawn carriage rides in urban settings are increasingly recognized as unsafe and inherently inhumane for the horses, and many cities around the globe have banned them from their streets. Those cities have rightly recognized that the welfare of horses and public safety are unnecessarily put at risk by this outdated and inhumane form of entertainment and that there is nothing romantic, fun or nostalgic about riding a horse-drawn carriage on a busy city street as cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles roar by.

Unfortunately, the City of Sacramento, California is one city that still jeopardizes the welfare of horses and puts public safety at risk by having a horse-drawn carriage attraction in its ‘Old Sacramento’ district. Working Animal Advocates, a Northern California non-profit, has extensively documented inhumane and unlawful conditions that exist for the horses pulling carriages in the City. For these horses, even simple necessities—such as shaded rest on hot days, water breaks and a safe environment— are routinely denied. The traffic, pollution, noise and paved streets of Old Sacramento are not a healthy or humane environment for horses, and their fate is made all the worse when even the modest laws enacted to protect them are not followed by carriage operators or enforced by the City.

These horses have no voice to raise to protect themselves, and all too often the only voices heard are those of the carriage operators and others within the horse industry. Please be a voice for them by signing our petition to end the inhumane and unlawful carriage rides in Sacramento, California.

Please see http://www.workinganimal.org for more info.