In a sign of the success of the animal rights movement, candidates running for mayor of New York City gathered for a forum on May 6 with an exclusive focus on how much they care about the nonhuman residents of the Big Apple.

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The forum was organized by NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets), a group that PETA works with, especially on our campaign to get horses forced to pull carriages off the streets of New York City. While the mayoral hopefuls drew attention to their vegetarian children and rescued animals, attendees made sure that the candidates understood that the cruel horse-drawn carriage trade is a key issue.

When PETA was founded in 1980, animal rights was all but absent from social and political agendas. Now, as Bob Dylan famously noted, "The times they are a-changin'." And as this event showed, they're changing in animals' favor!

How You Can Help

Please join PETA, NYCLASS, Lea Michele, Pink, Adrien Brody, Miley Cyrus, Martina Navratilova, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Johnston in calling for a ban on horse-drawn carriages in New York City. Then become a PETA member to help keep animal rights moving forward.

There is a certain kind of person, it seems, who enjoys dressing up like a deranged escapee from some historical theme park and swilling mint juleps just to watch horses run around a dirt track for a couple of minutes. But as a new PETA mobile billboard will remind visitors arriving at Churchill Downs to attend the 2013 Kentucky Derby, for the thoroughbreds who will be running on Saturday, horse racing is a matter of life and death. 

'Drugs. Breakdowns. Death.'

PETA's ad will be driven up and down the streets outside the racetrack in the days leading up to and on the day of the derby. Designed by Dana Mulranen, a gifted graphic and interactive design major at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, the billboard draws attention to the misuse of both "therapeutic" and illegal drugs that the racing industry uses to keep injured and tired horses running, leading to the deadly breakdown of more than three horses every day on U.S. racetracks.

Even if they survive being pumped full of drugs and forced to run at breakneck speed on hard tracks, thoroughbreds face another threat when they can no longer compete: They are often transported to slaughterhouses. There, they are shot in the head, are hoisted into the air by one leg, and have their throats slit so that their flesh can be sold for human consumption.

How You Can Help

Please urge your U.S. legislators to support the SAFE Act—the bill that stops the export of American horses for their meat as well as bans their slaughter within our borders.

And when it comes to the derby and all other horse races, don't attend 'em, don't watch 'em, and don't bet on 'em!

Here it is: the car that can save animals' lives:

New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), a group that has been working with PETA to free the horses who are forced to pull carriages on New York City's streets, commissioned a car designer to build a replica of a classic car that tourists could ride in instead. The result is a charming Gatsby-era "horseless carriage" inspired by the 1909 Pierce-Arrow and Packard. Designer Jason Wenig wanted people to feel transported, so his model includes romantic features, such as a stereo system, that aren't available in horse-drawn carriages. The re-envisioned classic car is also eco-friendly.

NYCLASS, PETA, and the New York City Council members who agree that too many horses have already died on New York's streets are pushing the city to allow one of the cars to begin offering tours on a trial basis. Israel recently paved the way by banning "any vehicle drawn by an animal" from operating on urban roads—the dangerous, congested streets of New York City are no place for horse-drawn vehicles, either.

Please urge the entire City Council to support the use of these lifesaving cars.

When Tommy Lee hits the stage tonight in Calgary, Alberta, there may be a special guest in the audience to watch him drum upside down: Alison Redford, the premier of Alberta. Tommy invited her to the Mötley Crüe concert so that she could experience a "really wild show" that doesn't involve injuring and killing animals. He hopes to convince the premier to use her influence to put a stop to the deadly chuckwagon races at the annual Calgary Stampede. 

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In the races, teams of horses are made to pull "pioneer wagons" around a track at breakneck speeds. They often collide with each other or the wagons, and more than a dozen horses have died in the event since 2009. Even after Calgary Stampede officials passed new rules last year that were intended to make the races safer for horses, three horses still sustained crippling injuries and had to be euthanized. Tommy is all for having a wild and crazy time but not when animals have to die for it.

What You Can Do

Join Tommy Lee in asking Redford to put the brakes on the chuckwagon races and save horses' lives. 

On Sunday, the University of Louisville's Kevin Ware sustained one of the most gruesome injuries in sports history. The outpouring of support from across the country, along with the response of his teammates, has been fantastic.

However, some horrifying leg injuries don't get the same attention, such as this one sustained by the great-granddaughter of legendary Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew and captured on video during a recent PETA investigation:

This young horse wasn't lauded or celebrated. There was no emergency surgery or outpouring of sympathy. She was just euthanized.

Fatal injuries like this one happen about three times every single day at racetracks across the country, including Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, home of the upcoming Kentucky Derby. That's because horses are forced to run at too young an age on bones that haven't fully developed. They are given drugs to mask pain so that they will run with existing injuries. And they are beaten into running at top speeds on hard, punishing track surfaces.

Unlike Louisville's indomitable Ware and other athletes who sustain injuries, horses used for racing don't choose to compete. And unlike human athletes who receive top-notch medical care and are often up and walking in a matter of days or weeks, horses who suffer catastrophic injuries are often killed right where they fall.

So tune in to the Final Four this weekend and cheer on Louisville (or Michigan, Syracuse, or Wichita State), but please never bet on, watch, or attend a horse race.

When it comes to helping animals, patience and persistence are often key, as was the case with these emaciated horses in Wisconsin. PETA learned about the animals' plight from a concerned person who had already convinced the sheriff's department to monitor their condition, even though the officers said that they could not seize the horses.

PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department exhorted law enforcement to try to reason with the owners—and it worked. The owners agreed to surrender custody of the horses, admitting that they didn't have enough money to care for them. The recovering equines now have plenty to eat and are safe on a wonderful farm.

So please never give up on assisting animals in jeopardy, even if you're told that no laws are being broken. Maybe you just have to connect with the one officer who is willing to go above and beyond the call of duty—but what matters is that help arrives in time.

Authorities in Texas and Oklahoma are acting on complaints from PETA that a "kill buyer"—someone who purchases horses and transports them to slaughterhouses or feedlots—falsified forms certifying that horses who were being transported to slaughter were free of a deadly equine disease.

Twice last year, a PETA investigator rode along with the kill buyer as he moved dozens of horses he had purchased in Iowa through Missouri and Kansas to feedlots and transfer points in Oklahoma and Texas. The kill buyer was caught on tape admitting that the veterinary forms he carried "certifying" that the horses in his trailer were free of deadly equine infectious anemia (EIA)—a potentially fatal viral disease with no known cure or preventive vaccine—were actually those of other horses, not those on board his truck.

PETA alerted the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry and the Texas Animal Health Commission that the kill buyer, by his own admission, was bringing horses into the states without valid EIA paperwork, risking the health of hundreds of other horses when potentially infected horses were unloaded onto crowded feedlots.

The latest allegations in Oklahoma are part of a wider horse slaughter investigation involving allegations of stolen property, concealing stolen property, transporting stolen property across state lines, and other crimes.

What You Can Do

Obviously, this kill buyer needs to be brought to justice, but he is just one piece of a large and corrupt industry. This case is just more evidence of the pressing need to pass the Safeguard American Food Exports Act, which would make it illegal to slaughter horses in the U.S. and to transport them to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. Please contact your representatives today and urge them to support this vital bill. 

Some might consider Rachel Alexandra lucky. In 2009, she became the first filly in 85 years to win the Preakness Stakes. The next year, she was retired from the dangers of the track and training to live as a broodmare—a female horse used for breeding—on a farm in Kentucky. But motherhood isn't coming easily to her. After the birth of her first foal, Jess's Dream, last year, Rachel Alexandra experienced pain so severe that she had to be hospitalized. The birth of her second foal last month was even more hazardous: She sustained life-threatening injuries and had to have emergency surgery to remove parts of her large intestines, and she just had another surgery this week to treat an abscess. That is why PETA has written to Rachel Alexandra's owner, Barbara Banke, urging her to retire the mare from breeding before pregnancy or foaling kills her.

L.Burchfield | cc by 2.0 

Many prize-winning horses—including Lady's Secret, Meadow Star, Typhoon Tracy, and Urban Sea—have died after giving birth. Rachel Alexandra's own mother, Lotta Kim, has a history of foaling complications: One of her foals was born prematurely and died, and another died at just 2 years of age because of wobbler syndrome. Lotta Kim rejected Rachel Alexandra, who then had to be raised by a nurse mare. Nurse mares, who are used to produce milk for orphaned foals and those whose mothers are being rebred, are routinely forced into a cycle of serial breeding, only to have their own babies torn away from them.

Tens of thousands of thoroughbreds are bred each year, often in assembly-line conditions like those documented by a PETA undercover investigator. Only a fraction of the 25,000 thoroughbred foals born every year will be winners, resulting in a "surplus" of about 20,000 unwanted thoroughbreds annually. Many of these horses, which can even include former Triple Crown race champions like Rachel Alexandra—and their offspring—are sold at auction and wind up in the hands of "kill buyers" who ship them to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico.

Surely, after earning more than $3 million for her owners, Rachel Alexandra has earned the right to a peaceful, leisurely retirement that is free of repeated pregnancies and dangerous foalings. 

As half of one of the world's cutest on- and off-screen couples, we figured that Lea Michele would have some great ideas for how to spend Valentine's Day. We were right. Lea doesn't want expensive jewelry or a massive bouquet of flowers. Her idea of a lovely evening is laid-back and simple.

"My idea of the perfect romantic Valentine's Day is staying at home, cooking a yummy dinner, and watching a really scary movie," she told us.

Sounds like the real-life Rachel loves simply snuggling up under a blanket with her beloved. But Lea made it clear where we'll never catch her canoodling: in a horse-drawn carriage. 

"The one thing I find the least romantic is taking a horse and carriage ride," she said. "I can't express enough how unhappy these horses are and how much pain and suffering they go through each day. Please do not ride [in horse-drawn carriages]. Take a beautiful walk together with your loved ones instead of bringing more pain to these beautiful animals."

Yeah, there are few things less romantic than watching horses breathe exhaust fumes and dodge traffic. Watching your loved one breathe in yummy aromas coming from the oven and dodge a playfully lobbed strawberry, however …

The strain of months of neglect showed on the horses' emaciated frames and in their sunken eyes. Confined to muddy pens that had long since been grazed out, they could only stare at the grass out of reach beyond the fence. They continually checked their dry water troughs, hoping that the rainy Washington weather would leave them a sip of water. Two dogs on the property fared no better. They waited listlessly for the once-a-week drop-by from their owner, when they would finally get to eat.

People who lived near the property where the animals were kept had called law enforcement time and again to report that the seven horses and the dogs were being neglected.For months, officials had been trying to get the animals’ owner to improve their living conditions, but the situation was getting worse. Finally, a neighbor called PETA and, at our urging, law enforcement seized all the animals. Several community residents stepped up to foster the horses and help them recover and the local animal shelter took in the dogs. A veterinarian confirmed that one of them was a full 40 pounds underweight.

Now, the horses and dogs are eating well and regaining their strength. And PETA is working with the district attorney to get cruelty charges filed against the animals' neglectful owner and we will push for the court to ban her from owning any more animals.