Madam Moderators;
If this posting of the petition is illegal please just delete it and forgive me, I won’t do it again
[QUOTE=The Preacher;6325015]
Madam Moderators;
If this posting of the petition is illegal please just delete it and forgive me, I won’t do it again
<a href=“http://<script type=“text/javascript” src=“http://dingo.care2.com/petitions/embed.js”></script><div class=“care2PetitionEmbed” rssPath=“http://www.thepetitionsite.com/xml/petitions/190/457/083/feed.swf” adSize=“small” publisherId=“583750239” grabbed=“0” flags=”#000000" buttonColor="#22489c"></div>">http://<script type=“text/javascript” src=“http://dingo.care2.com/petitions/embed.js”></script><div class=“care2PetitionEmbed” rssPath=“http://www.thepetitionsite.com/xml/petitions/190/457/083/feed.swf” adSize=“small” publisherId=“583750239” grabbed=“0” flags="#000000" buttonColor="#22489c"></div>[/QUOTE]
The link doesn’t work.
It does for me. Let me try posting it again. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/190/457/083/end-the-abuse-soring-corruption-in-the-tennessee-walking-horse-breed/
[QUOTE=The Preacher;6325015]
Madam Moderators;
If this posting of the petition is illegal please just delete it and forgive me, I won’t do it again
Thank you Preacher, it works now. quoted for posterity
We still need to contact our pres, congressmen, senators, and reps. Lets hit them from all angles.
[QUOTE=Louise;6325019]
It does for me. Let me try posting it again. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/190/457/083/end-the-abuse-soring-corruption-in-the-tennessee-walking-horse-breed/[/QUOTE]
Thanks! and signed.
Target: THE PRESIDENT, YOUR GOVERNOR, CONGRESSPERSONS AND SENATORS
Sponsored by: Nathanael Jackson For CHAMPAGNE WATCHOUT
Now is the time to once and for all end ALL forms of Abuse, Soring & Associated Corruption within the breed of Tennsess Walking Horses.
By enacting a law banning The Pads & Action Devices, the common practices of Soring will be unnecessary.
Increase the allocated budget of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) of the USDA the delegated branch to enforcer of the1970 Horse Protection Act ( HPA)
The Preacher gets it!!! The HPA laws are too weak and as they stand they legalize the stacked weighted chained methods and all the crap it produces.
Gotta change the laws that now permit it.
[QUOTE=Cashela;6324883]
They’re not 
4/10/12
TWHBEA stands firmly against ANY reduction in weight or size of the current pads or action device. The survival of our registry relies mainly on the performance horse. As the performance horse market has declined over the past 6 years, our annual budget has decreased from $5,000,000+/- to less than $2,000,000 annually. Our breed, horse, and registry will not survive at its current level without the existence of our great performance horse. [/FONT]
My Grandfather, Dr. Leonidas Euclid Irby, DVM joined TWHBEA in 1955 after he traded a bill owed to him for a Tennessee Walking Horse named Sunset Sue, and our family has remained members of TWHBEA ever since. Our family has been a part of producing nearly 9,000 foals since 1955 through various avenues including my previous five year career as the Director of Sales & Marketing at Waterfall Farms, the largest breeding facility within our industry. I can tell you that based on past informal studies of the major breeding farms that 90% of TWH mares bred, are bred with the expectation that the foals will become future padded performance show horses. If our pads and action devices are removed, TWHBEA, could expect a potential decline in breedings of 60-70% within a period of one year. The result of this shock and unintended consequence could possibly lead to the closure of an organization that is now in its 76th year. If this were to happen, the Tennessee Walking Horse would simply cease to exist. Today, our organization is considering leasing part of our facilities to private enterprise, and further cutbacks of our immediate budget. Less than 5 years ago, our organization had nearly 30 employees, and today we have a mere 12 employees.
ws/12ListeningSessionResponce0410.php[/QUOTE]
headdesk Are they really so ignorant as to believe that BL is their saviour and now their downfall? How can they possibly think that this kind of publicity is good for them? Mindblowing that they can’t see that this is the kind of thing that DRIVES PEOPLE AWAY, not keeps them around and promotes the breed. The decline in numbers ain’t because of the “decline in the performance horse market” boys, it’s because NOBODY ELSE THINKS THIS IS OK!
Just wow. Check out this guy, Papa’s Royal Delight. I am not terribly familiar with TWH names, but apparently he’s quite the superstar of the TWH sound show circuit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgX9CKqqhQ&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jD-7qRHSCw&feature=relmfu
This, I am thinking, is what the TWH was intended to be. Here is a relaxed, happy, BAREFOOT horse demonstrating some beautiful natural gaits.
What is so wrong with these lovely gaits that some s#itheels feel they must torment and abuse the horses to get some ridiculously exaggerated movement?
thanks hurleycan and mara for the videos - they will be added to the resource page later today along with the petition
[QUOTE=WalkInTheWoods;6324871]
It is easier to make a big lick horse out of a horse that is closer to pace than trot in the gait spectrum. So this is what the BL breeders have been breeding for. They have to an extent bred the runwalk out of the BL horses. The BL stallions that make it to Celebration and earn WGC titles end up in the breeding shed. People are impressed with their titles and breed their mares to them or buy offspring, either because they are into BL, (either knowing about the cruelty or not) or they dont know about the cruelty and just think that the title means something and they will be getting a good TWH.
If BL ends, and if people learn more about the breed and seek horses with more runwalk not bred out of them, the Who’s Who in the breeding world will change. It could take a few generations of careful breeding to bring back numbers of good solid runwalk Walkers.
In the meantime, just like bayou_bengal said, many ppl will want these horses because of their imagined “good breeding”. Some will buy them and then try to rehab them to gait properly for trail or flatshod shows. Others will feel sorry for them and want to just give them a good life. Some of course may go to auction, but i think the majority of them will be sold or placed just because of their perceived value down south.[/QUOTE]
THIS <LIKE>
[QUOTE=War Admiral;6324863]
The body that governs the licensing of TWH trainers is the Walking Horse Trainers Association. So yes, he did have his license revoked… Seems they’re throwing him under the bus to save themselves…[/QUOTE]
100% CORRECT
[QUOTE=Cashela;6324883]
They’re not 
4/10/12
TWHBEA stands firmly against ANY reduction in weight or size of the current pads or action device. The survival of our registry relies mainly on the performance horse. As the performance horse market has declined over the past 6 years, our annual budget has decreased from $5,000,000+/- to less than $2,000,000 annually. Our breed, horse, and registry will not survive at its current level without the existence of our great performance horse. [/FONT]
My Grandfather, Dr. Leonidas Euclid Irby, DVM joined TWHBEA in 1955 after he traded a bill owed to him for a Tennessee Walking Horse named Sunset Sue, and our family has remained members of TWHBEA ever since. Our family has been a part of producing nearly 9,000 foals since 1955 through various avenues including my previous five year career as the Director of Sales & Marketing at Waterfall Farms, the largest breeding facility within our industry. I can tell you that based on past informal studies of the major breeding farms that 90% of TWH mares bred, are bred with the expectation that the foals will become future padded performance show horses. If our pads and action devices are removed, TWHBEA, could expect a potential decline in breedings of 60-70% within a period of one year. The result of this shock and unintended consequence could possibly lead to the closure of an organization that is now in its 76th year. If this were to happen, the Tennessee Walking Horse would simply cease to exist. Today, our organization is considering leasing part of our facilities to private enterprise, and further cutbacks of our immediate budget. Less than 5 years ago, our organization had nearly 30 employees, and today we have a mere 12 employees.
ws/12ListeningSessionResponce0410.php[/QUOTE]
Complete BS! Big Lick breeders, trainers and owners make a up a TINY sliver of the TWH population! Furthermore in the year 2012 are a way of life for everyone.
[QUOTE=spookhorse;6324933]
All the other gaited breed organizatios survive without padded horses- those orgs horses are not just marketed with the shows in mind, but also usually having a flat or keg shod haired horse who is suitable for multiple disciplines within the breed.
The TWHBEA needs to be marketing horses towards versatility and phasing out the Big Lick. Those of us who own TWHs know how many different things they can do! And I think that phasing out the Big Lick and cleaning up the image of the TWHBEA would eventually bring members back into the fold who bugged off years ago due to the abuse. New menbers may be emcouraged to come into the breed, as well.
Right now what they’ve got is people buying TWHs and only getting that first membership year to transfer the horse then never renewing again (what I did).[/QUOTE]
THIS ,<LIKE> If they had done this ALMOST 30 YEARS AGO-- THEY WOULD NOT BE FACING THE CRISIS THEY ARE FACING NOW.
As I have said-- since at least the late 1960s, some people have been trying or have tried to “clean up” the TWHBEA and all the rest of those organizations so invested in the Big Lick. Many, like myself, just decided to walk away from the corruption, cronyism and cruelty despite having been a fourth or fifth generation plantation horse or TWH owner. Yes, that’s right, my great great grandfather and his brothers were planters- they had walking horses back befor the War Between the States. Those horses were called Plantation Horses, Saddle Horses or just Walking Horses back before the TWHBEA was started in the mid 1930s.
Many people forget that the first RECORDED reference to a horse doing the running walk was a horse called Bald Stockings and he was foaled in 1838!!
It is PAST time to BAN the use of pads, chains, grotesquely heavy shoes that require hoofbands to keep them on and ANY kind of action device including the old weighted bell boots that got this whole thing started as being acceptable in the show ring. That needs to have been nipped in the bud when it all got started in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. If the USDA had really done its job of enfgorcement back right after the HPA was passed in 1970, ths thread would not exist.
And for those in DENIAL-- it is a known FACT that a pacey or swingy going horse is preferred for training as a BL horse. If you are breeding for a pacey horse- you are NOT breeding for a natural square going running walk – you are breeding for that tendency to PACE.
Allen F-1 some of the old walkers were indeed mixed gaited. Allen was said to trot and pace as well as do a running walk. And yes, there is a skill involved in riding a real natural walking horse. You do not just sit on them like a sack of potatoes and hang on like the BL amateurs- and some of the trainers do.
COTH;
Listen good people, I have watched this group grow and expand and gain much respect, credibility in the whole of the equine world…Internationally!!!
What this group says and does impacts the industry
This is the fourth day since the first of several broadcast on this subject…over 13,000 views on this subject.
You don’t need to post, it could be said that everyone here loves horses, what they mean to you, what they make us feel.
I have often said “I do not believe I will see my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ returning to get us through the clouds riding a padded and chained horse. do you?”
Let’s say that 1,000 of this 13,000 oh lets even say 2, 000 are return people interested in this topic…
I think this group only could generate over 10, 000 signatures alone…
Go on there, sign up, make the numbers of CORH impress and encourage not only horse people but people who care…
I am all over the internet…and to date…this is the largest single group response…but you keep it internal…
Get out there COTH’ers and lead the way…and the best part…you don’t even have a horse in the fight!
I challenge you to look your horse in the eye and tell it why you didn’t sign…
yes, SIR !
Copy/paste the url to your Facebook page. I expect even my gamer non-horsey friends to help out here.
My signature is on there 
I don’t know if anyone else has had a look at this, but here is a list from the USDA website of HPA violations from the last two years. Warning if you click, it’s a 500+ page PDF file :eek: http://acissearch.aphis.usda.gov/HPA...d=&ed=&hio=ALL
I scrolled through the entire thing and compiled a list of people with violations in my area. Going to be passing it along to my fellow local horse people so we can avoid doing business with them directly or indirectly. Will also be emailing them a link to Preacher’s petition 
[QUOTE=WalkInTheWoods;6325158]
yes, SIR !
That link only took me to the front page. Try this link to go directly to the petition: http://bit.ly/KoN24L
bkkone - that link took me to a different anti-soring page
try link in post #332 again - think i fixed it - let me know !
bkkone- It took me to a different anti-soring petition too (which I also signed).
Signed and shared.
![http://www.twhbea.com/Ne[IMG]http://www.twhbea.com/graphics_sts/headers/news_header.gif](http://www.twhbea.com/Ne%5BIMG%5Dhttp://www.twhbea.com/graphics_sts/headers/news_header.gif){kind=link}