Sheer Terror

Horse in close proximity to a train. Train had stopped for a few minutes, but was starting up making lots of train noises..
Liz says this was a truck-in horse that had just arrived. You can see by his ears that he is noticing the train behind him. His driver is off to the side...you can see the reins going off to the horse's right

There has been a particularly irritating little meme going around the Interwebs lately showing a smug, self-satisfied, young fool standing next to a NYC carriage horse while holding a poster saying, "Horses are terrified of traffic and loud noises".

No problem

She may even believe it.. The horse is resting, hip-shot, head at a comfortable half mast, eyes drooping, ears akimbo, obviously to anyone who has ever been around a horse...or for that matter watched a John Wayne movie...half asleep and perfectly contented.

Another one.
She was at the fair all week...you can see just how worried she is about the trains and commotion there.

And yet a visit to this girl's page yields reams of comments of the same ilk. Poor, poor frightened horsie, he needs to walk in green meadows with unicorns, far away from awful human beings and their scary stuff.

I just love self-proclaimed equine experts.

But they don't know nuttin. Can't even tell a sleeping horse from a runaway. I actually stepped outside the boundaries I usually set for myself on this stuff and confronted a couple of people about care of the NY horses. It is a damned shame that they want to remove this last little bit of actual nature from the stone and concrete jungle because of their own ignorance.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts...or trains...or much of anything

I also took a few pictures over at the fair of horses in conjunction with railroad trains. The tracks abut the northern edge of the fairgrounds and run right past the stables....mere feet away from hundreds of horses, every single year.

If I were a horse...alas I'm not but....I would think that thousands of tons of hurtling, whistle-shrieking, thunder rumbling train racing past might just be a little scarier than a few cars and taxis....well maybe the taxis are worse but...

Anyhow, within a day or two, usually even in just a few hours, most horses grow accustomed to the trains and the noise from the midway and the hundreds of people pushing strollers and trailing broods of noisy kids and ignore them completely.

Just like people do. They are adaptable beasts, not too stupid to learn to cope with their surroundings. The anti-animal-interaction activists cannot, in my opinion, make the same claim.

This is worth a look too.