After it was discovered that the Central Park carriage horse was frequently flogged, emaciated, and twice as old as it was said to be, it was moved to a farm in upstate New York to retire.
Following his collapse at the junction of Ninth Avenue and West 45th Street in Hell’s Kitchen at around 5 o’clock on August 10, Ryder seemed to have cuts on his neck, bruises on his knees, and abrasions on his legs.
On his way back to the stables at 39 Street, he fell and was unable to get back up.
Online videos depict the rider, Ian McKeever, shouting “Get up! Get up! Get up! The animal, whose knees were buckled, said, “Come on, get up.”
In an effort to get Ryder to stand, McKeever also tugged the reins and smacked him while a big crowd gasped in terror. Officials from the NYPD were able to bring the horse back on its feet after more than an hour with the assistance of an adrenaline shot.
The treatment of Ryder is “inexcusable and unjustified,” Ken Frydman, a media and government relations counsellor for Central Park Conservancy, told the New York Post. “I’ve been the staunchest advocate of carriage drivers.”
Frydman noted that when McKeever first bought the stallion in May, he was well aware of the horse’s age, which is more than double the beginning age to make a horse pull carriages.
According to Frydman, who was quoting McKeever, “He purchased the horse on the cheap and assumed he’d squeeze everything he could out of it.”
According to industry experts, horses must be five years old before they may pull coaches and carriages. They often retire around the age of 26.
Ryder is not “retired,” according to Edita Birnkrant, executive director of the animal rights non-profit NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Street), who also claimed in a statement to the Post that “Ryder is being held hostage by his abusers”— the same people who have been exposed for repeatedly lying about Ryder’s heinous neglect and criminal mistreatment.
How is it possible for anybody to trust a word they say? added the executive. We are quite worried that Ryder will just be put to death by the same heartless individuals who willfully let him draw a carriage when sickly, undernourished, and old.
The condition Ryder created, Equine Protozal Myeloencephalitis (EDM), affects the central nervous system of horses. Christine Hansen, a spokesperson for Historic Horse-Drawn Carriages of Central Park, said it may flare up at any moment, even after Ryder stops feeling numb in his back legs.
She said that Ryder may be able to return to normal with regular medicine.
But in certain instances, she said, the infection’s resulting weakness would last.
Hansen added, “It might be terribly catastrophic or it can be something you can cure.” Simply said, only time will tell.
Hansen revealed to DailyMail.com that Ryder had worked as a buggy horse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, before moving to the Big Apple in May.
Hansen said, “Those horses work incredibly hard. They can be taught to work for hours without rest.”
City carriage authorities said they had no knowledge of Ryder’s Pennsylvania medical history or if he had been starved, although Ryder was slated to be taken to a slaughterhouse before carriage horse officials decided to purchase him.
According to New York City regulations, carriage horses are only allowed to work nine hours in a single 24-hour period and must take five weeks off annually at a horse stable facility.
Additionally, they must see a veterinarian at least twice a year and are not permitted to operate in very cold or hot temperatures.
In fact, Hansen said, the business once had to close because of a moon eclipse that authorities believed may disrupt the internal clocks of the horses.
Additionally, Ryder had 24 hour access to a stable hand and was promised veterinary care in his former stall, which was in midtown Manhattan, according to Hansen.
Exclusively captured by DailyMail.com, the West Side Livery stables seem tidy with hay stacked in the corner and a tiny window to allow light in throughout the day.
According to Hansen, it is cleaned several times per day, and the other horses in the stable, including a few of his own, appear to fit into their stalls well.
Hansen said that the carriage horse business “in many ways, saved him.”
The precise day Ryder moved to his new house in upstate New York is unknown. West Side Livery Stables has been approached by DailyMail.com for comment.
When Ryder fell on August 10—following a protracted scorching in the city—people all throughout New York City were surprised.
One person can be heard in the video asking, “What if I slapped you around like that, bro?” according to the New York Post.
Others could be heard appealing with the guy to stop whipping the horse, to which he responded that he was doing so in an effort to force him to get up.
Hansen, however, described how Ian McKeever, Ryder’s owner, attempted to unhitch the horse from his black carriage and promptly requested assistance from a veterinarian and the Mounted Unit of the New York Police Department.
Since the horse wasn’t moving when the police came, they doused him with water as a precaution, according to Hansen, who also noted that the animal was not overheating and that all of his vital signs were within normal limits.
In reality, she said, Ryder’s peculiar gait and EPM diagnosis were not made until the doctor had the horse walk.
The horse “collapsed,” according to a witness, Uber Eats driver Kelvin Gonzalez, who also noted that the animal was plainly emaciated, dehydrated, and hungry.
In an interview with The Washington Post, he called the situation “extremely horrible” and advised the driver to give the horse some water.
According to Kelvin, the horse had tried to get up more than 10 times before police administered adrenaline but kept falling back down.
The witness said that since he was disoriented and thirsty when he drank the street water, he believed that the horse had knocked the water over.
The man, according to him, didn’t give a damn about the horse and was just concerned with getting it going once again so he could be paid more, he said.
Cathy Garfield, a 75-year-old tourist who had grown up among horses, said that she cautioned bystanders against attempting to encourage the horse to get up.
The resistance against carriage rides in Central Park and Midtown was sparked by the viral footage of other animals perishing and colliding with cars, and was further fueled by the video of the horse passing out.
Following the incident, animal rights activists reinforced their commitment to ending the carriage industry.
In a statement, Edita Birnkrant, executive director of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), said, “How many more instances like this do we need? It is clear that this is animal abuse, and it has to stop.
Nathan Semmel, a 52-year-old campaigner with Voters for Animal Rights, said that electric vehicles should replace horse-drawn carriages.
Drivers and horses deserve better, according to councilman Robert Holden, who posted the video on the same day Ryder’s crashed. That notion is now up for discussion in the municipal council.
Activists who exploited Ryder’s accident as a political instrument, on the other hand, were criticised by Hansen, who said: “They don’t understand the horses.”
Although horses are sentient animals and can experience illness, she said that in the age of social media, people often “say it’s because they’re a carriage horse and not because they’re a sentient animal.”
She said that it was inevitable that they would “exploit people’s emotions” for political gain and that they were “glad” when the video went viral.
She said, “I would never drive an electric carriage.
She said that there is no indication that the 130 present horse drivers and the 20 more people who rely on the horse carriage industry would be able to maintain themselves under the proposal, calling it a “anti-horse policy” as well.
Hansen proceeded by claiming that despite discussing the conditions at the stables, the bill’s sponsors had never been there and did not see the horses as living beings that sometimes become sick.
All horses would be relocated and lose their homes, according to Hansen, who added that “they would prefer the horses be dead.”