Petition against horse-drawn carriages draws thousands of signatures

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - Taking a horse-drawn carriage ride downtown is a holiday tradition for a lot of people here in the Tri-State. But now there's a move to ban them and an online petition to get rid of them.

Thousands of people who want to make horse-drawn carriages a thing of the past have signed the petition, which was started by Danielle Roberts on Tuesday.

"I think people just see the horses downtown and don't think anything of it but we're imploring people to look more to the reality that they don't see when they see these horses on the street in passing," Roberts said.

The animal activists FOX 19 spoke with say the living conditions of the horses are deplorable. Several of these horses are being kept inside a fenced lot on Livingston Street which is a far cry from the country. Activists say the horses don't have anywhere to run or roam and that's why they want to put a stop to horse drawn carriages in Cincinnati, Newport and Covington.

We reached out to the company called "Elegant Carriage" but they refused to comment on the matter. The group of animal activists plan to bring this issue before city council within the next month.

In the middle of the city's west end, positioned between a scrapyard and busy street sits the lot where the horses are kept is a most unexpected place to find the horses that we expect to see carrying carriages along our city streets. The stark site of these large animals being held in such a small place is what sparked Danielle Roberts to start a petition in hopes of a banning horse-drawn carriages the area.

"The citizens of Cincinnati really care about this issue," said Roberts. "Now that we're getting so much traction with this petition, we plan to in the very near future to contact our elected officials and talk to them about these issues to see if they would agree to vote on banning horse drawn carriages in Cincinnati."

But it's not good to judge a book by its cover and frankly, we wanted to get the other side of this story. So on Thursday, FOX 19 went to the stable where the horses are kept hoping to get a response to the petition. The manager at the stable on Livingston Street refused to talk and he couldn't tell us what carriage
We also called the main line listed for the company called Elegant Carriages but they, too, refused to comment.

Click here for the link to the petition to ban horse-drawn carriages