[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.htm...
Are you sure. Why could it not be a pet? The image in the OP doesn't appear to show a harness (as in the NYTimes article) as is usual for an assistance animal. In my country assistance animals usually wear some high-vis in public too.
A logical explanation doesn't change the analogy. I'm aware that S&M Gimps exist. If I went into an Apple Store where someone was being led around by a gimp, and no-one was paying attention, I'd still think that was unusual.
Not to mention that an aside explaining that helper horses exists detracts from the art of storytelling.
Let's say that I see the horse and I do realize that it's an assistance animal, albeit unusual. If other people doesn't look so surprised I might suspect my ignorance: it seems that all other people know what's going on, and take it as perfectly normal. As I don't want to stand out in the crowd as the only freak who didn't know about this socially accepted habit, I simply play quiet as nothing strange happened.
The same thing could happen in the head of many people and the overall effect would be that of uninterested people not caring about anything.
Group psychology is a very strange and fascinating thing.
(The analogy is with the tale of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperors_New_Clothes)
> soon Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences, where Rose was attending nursing school, refused Richard access, too. Stories started appearing about Rose and her monkey in the newspaper and on TV. “Suddenly,” she told me, “everyone knew I had a mental disorder.”
a monkey on one's back! idiom origin revealed!
Aside: I saw a guide dog on a sweltering day in peak summer last year in Melbourne. It was clearly very uncomfortable, licking its lips. But it was also clear there was no chance it would let down its owner. It was touching to see such faithfulness; now I often donate to the guide dogs.
When not "at work" (usually there is some signal), it obviously depends on the owner; but most of the disabled people I know pamper and love these animals to death, and they are extremely well treated. They are simply only showered with affection in private, when not expected to be focused.
Give me liberty or give me death.
In any case this is not abuse (is he a troll or just ignorant?). I've rarely had trouble getting a halter on a horse except for one who doesn't like his ears being touched. My take is that if an animal that's basically 1,100 lbs of muscle (OK,not that one :-) lets you do something, it's not too bothered by it! Horses have absolutely no problem letting you know when they're pissed.
I am not so pleased to see an argument for the banality of evil on what is normally a bastion of liberal hipster moral righteousness either.
The Jews that weren't killed in the concentration camps "didn't have
it so bad" compared to the ones were. But this says nothing of whether
or not overall treatment of Jews in concentration camps was good or bad.a) I've spent a reasonable amount of time around horses;
b) Can see nothing in that photo to suggest the horse has been mistreated or is distressed; and
c) Find this kind of trivialization of animal abuse by someone who has little experience with horses to be offensive nonsense.
There's real "horrible abuse" out there, and this is most emphatically not an example of it.