Exactly. People have this fantasy about horses frolicking around a pasture chasing butterflies. Maybe they should go out and look at how non-domesticated horses (mustangs, for example) live: on the verge of starvation much of the time, fighting with each other to stay alive, and constantly pursued by predators.
Horses are expensive to keep and feed, and if they didn’t have any use to human beings, they’d have disappeared by now.
In addition, I can tell you (as a horse owner) that horses actually like to work. They like the attention, they like the stability, and some horses even take training as a sort of challenge (good race horses and dressage horses are not being “abused,” but actually have enough smarts to enjoy doing something well).
The carriage horses here in my little town spend most of their days being fed carrots and being brushed by the drivers while they wait for fares, broken up by 20 minute trips around town. Their worst threat is probably that of having their noses rubbed off by the friendly tourists...
I grew up in New York and used to love to go down to pat the horses on the edge of the park when I was a kid. When I was back there a couple of weeks ago, I was happy to see kids standing next to a horse and giving him little shy pats while the Irish driver told them something unintelligible about how to take care of a horse.
If cows weren’t used for meat and milk do you think anyone would keep them for pets? There might be the odd pair in the zoo... but wait...... zoos are cruel!
“Their worst threat is probably that of having their noses rubbed off by the friendly tourists..”
My two daughters pose even a more serious threat. They like to kiss them on their noses. Not sure if the horse minds or not. I’ve done all that I can do to sway them from this cruel behavior to no avail /s.
That's not a fantasy. In my former job as an Undercover Horse looking for illegal salt-lick trafficking, most of the horses I met did, indeed, frolic, and many chased butterflys. If a horse catches one and eats it, they crap skittles for a week, so it is not only entertaining, but profitable.