All horses go to heaven.
A New York City carriage horse that made headlines and spurred debate after bolting and crashing into two cars, has met a sad but peaceful end after an idyllic retirement on a sprawling farm in the Hamptons.
In February 2018, a large gray draft horse named Arthur was spooked by a man yelling and opening an umbrella in Central Park. He ran off, carrying three Texas tourists in his carriage, and crashed into two parked cars.
The incident left the passengers with minor injuries, the carriage crumpled and the cars with significant damage. Arthur, meanwhile, became something of a poster pony for animal activists and was whisked away to a horse sanctuary in Massachusetts.
At the time, it was reported that a number of organizations and private citizens, including comedian Whitney Cummings, had expressed interest in adopting Arthur, but then the horse quietly trotted away from the spotlight.
The Post can now exclusively report that Arthur was eventually adopted by Sabrina Rudin, a West Village restaurateur who took an interest in him after reading about his plight in this paper.
“I had always wanted to rescue a carriage horse … and something about him struck me,” said Rudin, 39, a native New Yorker who owns Spring Cafe Aspen in Greenwich Village and Aspen, Colo.
She said the adoption process was “complicated” because of the media attention around Arthur and political debate over carriage horses, but she persisted. In May 2018, his owners released him to Rudin.
“I was very clear that I just wanted to very privately bring him home … and give him a different kind of life,” said Rudin.
Finding a stable large enough for Arthur, a towering Percheron gelding, proved challenging. But Rudin found a home for him at Swan Creek Farms in Bridgehampton. The barn’s owners, Jagger and Mandy Topping, were able to combine two stalls to make a large enough home for Arthur.
“They helped me give him a really beautiful life,” said Rudin, who grew up riding horses. “The first few times he saw grass, he was so excited, he was really happy, you could tell that he was really happy to be free.”
In his first few months at Swan Creek, Arthur, a shy, gentle giant, struggled to make friends with any of the horses.
Then, Mandy called Rudin one day with some surprising news: Arthur had become chummy with the barn’s miniature donkey, Jingles. Despite their noticeable height difference, the two were inseparable.
“I was just cracking up laughing [when she told me],” Rudin recalled.
The two pals enjoyed years of frolicking in grassy pastures together, spending most of their days outside. Arthur never pulled a carriage again, nor was he ever ridden.
Rudin and her three young sons, ages 3 to 9, visited him often, showering him with carrots, apples and oat horse cookies.
“He was amazing with the boys,” she said. “And it was a way to sort of teach them in a really nice, gentle way about something we can do for animals,”
A few weeks ago, it was discovered that Arthur, who was estimated to be about 18 years old, had lymphoma and had a large mass in his rectum.
He deteriorated rapidly at the Cornell Ruffian equine hospital in Elmont, NY, and couldn’t go back to Swan Creek to see his friend a final time.
So, last Sunday, the Toppings transported Jingles to the hospital to say goodbye.
“They had this very emotional reunion … Arthur could hear him coming down the hall, and Jingles was hee-hawing for him,” Rudin said. “They spent the whole last morning together.”
On Monday, Rudin cradled Arthur’s head, whispered her love to him and cried as he went to sleep a final time. She asked the dying horse to send her a sign that he’d made it to the other side OK.
The next day, one of Mandy’s other clients randomly sent her an old photo of her daughter standing with a carriage horse that looked like Arthur. The year was 2018.
Rudin doesn’t believe it was actually a photo of Arthur, but she does think it was him sending her a sign that he was ok.
“I do believe that wherever he is, that was a wink from him that he was safe,” she said.
To be sharing his story with The Post, she said, is a “full circle moment.”
“It feels like yesterday that I saw the article about him.”
Read the full article here
