Horses Everywhere Are Already Over Spooky Season

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY—The crackle of fall leaves skittering across the barn driveway. Streaming ghoul and goblin decorations in the trees. Costume classes at the local horse show.

“No more,” says Leslie Whinnies, a representative for the National Equine Teamsters Union (NETU), a U.S.-based group created to lobby and advocate for the rights of horses from coast to coast.

This month, Whinnies helped the NETU file a petition to end Spooky Season—a pledge signed by thousands of horses across the United States. “The horses in our union are fed up with Spooky Season, and they’re no longer willing to take it lying down—or standing up,” Whinnies said.

Among the stipulations listed in the complaint: Corn stalks, artisanal gourds, and other Spooky Season-themed jump course decorations; seasonal pumpkin horse treats; and the disrespect of having to cart around child riders overly hopped up on candy.

“We’ve had members forced to jump upside-down brick walls with scarecrows tucked inside. Lesson ponies asked to take care of 8-year-olds bouncing out of their skin they’ve so many boxes of Milk Duds and Pixy Stix,” Whinnies says.

“Horses are flight animals. Their ability to sense danger, startle, and run away has been essential to their survival for millennia. We spend thousands of dollars a year on stomach medications and calming supplements, stuffing their ears, lunging them, and yelling at that guy by the rail who may or may not have stood up from his chair too quickly.

“We try to create the calmest, least stimulating environments for them to be comfortable and perform at their best. And then, Spooky Season rolls around, and humans expect horses to flip some sort of imaginary switch, and keep their sh*t together in the middle of this mayhem, all for some manufactured Hallmark card holiday? You can’t make this stuff up.”

In addition to their petition, NETU plans to picket in front of a number of haunted houses, corn mazes, and Spirit pop-up stores around the United States. Whinnies says the horses will organize in order to raise awareness about the unrealistic expectations heaped on them during this very silly, scary time.

“We’ll be there, rain or shine. We’ll be there, come sleet, hail, or snow,” she says. “We won’t back down. We’ll protest, we’ll walk, we’ll raise our signs, we’ll bravely hold the line, come what may…

“Or at least until the wind picks up.”

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