Horse Drawn Buggies In NYC Must Go!!!!!

They are a fixture in and around Central Park In NYC all year around. They are the little horse drawn carriages that take tourists mostly for a slow ride around the park and the surrounding city streets for a fee. There are about 175 of them registered in the city and about 350 or so horses to pull them in shifts. While it all looks so romantic to people as they ride by the part that most people never see is the toll that it takes on the horses that have to pull these things around the city and the harm it does to these usually shy and easily frightened animals. Horses are skittish even under the most serene circumstances but when they are placed in the middle of all that hectic traffic in Manhattan they can be easily rattled and there have been a number of incidents over the last several years where in horses have been spooked by ambulance sirens and horns and have bolted and caused injuries and even deaths to riders and pedestrians.
For the horse itself it is no easy life. They are forced to live literally in the middle of the street and pull a carriage behind other cars in traffic while breathing in the tail exhaust from the cars in front of them and living mostly a nose to tailpipe life which can cause them respiratory problems that can kill them. In the summertime the heat from the pavement on the city streets can reach in excess of 200 degrees while they are pulling their buggies and some horses have collapsed from heat stroke under these conditions. The hard pavement of the streets is also hard on their feet from the constant pounding and can do damage to their limbs and in some cases horses have had to be "Put Down" after suffering this kind of damage. In the wintertime the horses are forced to pull buggies through the snow and some have slipped and broken limbs which has lead to their deaths. Because real estate space in Manhattan is among the most expensive in the world the stables that the horses are kept in are only a little larger than their own bodies and in many cases the horses are forced to sleep standing up because there is no space for them to lay down to sleep. Their food in the stables is often thrown on the floor for them to eat and this causes it to be contaminated and they as a result sometimes get sick.
I have been a lifelong New York resident and I never have gone on one and i never will. I don't like the thought that i might be adding to the suffering of some poor animal and adding to their pain. There have been calls for years from animal rights groups in the city to ban these horses from the streets and convert the buggies to motorized ones and eliminate the suffering of these animals but so far the City Council and the Mayor have done almost nothing. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has said in the past that we need the horse and buggies in the city for tourism and as a result has been willing to do little to stop it.