HORSES SPURRED EARLY ANIMAL WELFARE
Large public animals were commonplace at the turn of the 20th century
Connecticut police in July arrested a former college professor after his Labradoodle died in his hot car. Officials later discovered that his previous dog had died the same way.
The story was horrific, but not a surprise. Being stuck in a hot car kills hundreds of pets every year, a tragic trend that has prompted many states to pass laws penalizing owners who leave animals to swelter and protecting Good Samaritans who break windows to help. But the concern about overheated animals isn’t new — it dates to the early years of the American animal protection movement.
At that time, however, fledgling activists were not as worried about dogs. Instead, they focused on urban horses.
When Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866, its seal depicted an angel, sword at the ready and hand raised in protest as a teamster goes to beat his horse. In that pre-automobile era, horses were public animals, seen daily by urbanites as they pulled milk wagons and omnibuses.
“An urban banker encountered more horses on a daily basis than a cowboy in Montana,” Ann Norton Greene, a University of Pennsylvania historian who wrote a book about working horses, said in an email.
Although homeless dogs were also a focus of animal protection groups, most “were initially reluctant to jump headlong into dealing with stray dogs because they were so overwhelmed with their work with laboring animals” like horses, according to University of Texas historian Janet Davis.
Summer’s stifling heat made conditions for workhorses difficult, often causing them to falter. In July 1905, 148 horses died in Washington alone, according to a news report from the time.
Activists offered hosedowns and advocated that drivers switch to summer-weight harnesses. In 1902, a music event at the Shoreham hotel in Washington raised money for equine water fountains. In Boston, one fountain design boasted individual drinking basins to limit disease. A dog watering area was just beneath.
Horse clothing further blurred horse-human lines. Toward the end of the 19th century, the idea that horses should wear human-style hats for protection from the summer heat gained traction, particularly in European cities such as Berlin, London and Paris. Many teamsters had already been fastening sponges, soaked in cool water, to their horses’ heads. But by July 1899, New York stores featured fully-fashioned horse hats in their windows. The most common model was a peaked straw with a red tassel. The animals’ ears poked through holes on either side.
By 1902, horse millinery had moved beyond the utilitarian into the fashionable. You could buy your horse a hat made out of canvas, stretched over a millinery frame, with a flynet. Driving and saddle horses wore Peter Pan hats, yachting caps, and bonnets known as mob caps.
Some of the few horses still left on the city street today pull carriages in Manhattan, and they have long been at the center of a controversy. Activists want them banned; carriage drivers argue that they provide jobs, attract tourists and are well cared-for. Blazing summer temperatures play a part in this, too.
“Certainly,” said Greene, “concern about horses in the heat is used to support the argument against carriages.”
But in the animal protection world, concern about the danger of workhorses overheating has given way to the plight of harder-to-spot dogs.
“Urban horses were on the street or in stables, not in enclosed metal boxes,” said Greene, referring to the cars that today can act as death traps for dogs and other pets. “The meaning and function of animals has changed as well.”