Very good solutions offered in this thread to eliminate the problem. You have to go after those mechanical attachments to the feet that corrupted the training and use of the horses to begin with.
As far as other breeds being affected, well in the long run restricting height of pads, weight of shoes and eliminating showing with bands, chains and cut tied up tails etc may be just what is needed to bring all saddle seat disciplines forward in their training practices.
[QUOTE=CFFarm;6327407]
Not to side track this thread but horses do perform dressage moves out in the field all the time. Classical dressage sought to allow the horse to move as at liberty with a rider. IMHO it’s morfing into man’s idea of what it should look like (and indeed looking more like saddle seat every year-along with the severe training methods). Big Lick has abuses built right into the discipline. As I’ve asked before “how can anyone find it beautiful??!!”
Maybe if these old men learned to actually ride…[/QUOTE]
I believe you stated you are a beginner at Dressage? Go watch some classes and then come back here and tell how natural they are moving. Ask over in the Dressage forum for them to sign a petition for a law that bans pads and action devices without any specifics and let me know how that goes over.
[QUOTE=sunridge1;6326891]
I think that is what everyone wants. They/we have had 50 years to clean it up. 50 years for them to change on their own volition, 50 years for disgusted people to come forward, to stand up. Brave the intimidation tactics. However if you want to belong or be a part of the cult… I mean club, you keep your mouth shut MYOB or suffer the consequences. Unlike sound horse training, they make doing right thing more difficult. Oh wait…
Believe me when I say, they will go down screaming rather than change.[/QUOTE]
I believe you that it will be very difficult and I will do what I can to put pressure on those accountable to stop the abuse.
I disagree with taking down all TWH trainers or any other trainers who use light weight rollers or a pad on their horses to train and are not abusive in any way. It is no different than the training methods used by any Sport Horse trainer or Show Horse discipline discussed on this BB.
If you are not into Sport Horses or Show Disciplines,why are you here?
[QUOTE=lifesabreeze;6326831]And you do not know how side reins change a horse’s action/stride? You don’t know how various gear applied to a horse’s head can change their stride? Are you a beginner just taking your first couple of lessons?
Or are you just quacking before thinking?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=jetsmom;6327024]They don’t change knee action as in the previous posters definition.
Are you just being obtuse to be nasty???[/QUOTE]
Action and Stride are what you stated and what I replied to. Are you a beginner? or just…
[QUOTE=SwampYankee;6327210]
The point that needs to be made to them in doing so is the simple truth that all this “action” is a “gait” that has no function in the real world. Was the TWH NOT a horse whose original “job” was to be ridden many miles every day, by plantation overseers, itinerant preachers, country doctors, et. al.? That to me says a long, efficient, level, ground-covering stride, dare I even say “daisy-clipping.”
It certainly would NOT get you very far for a horse to be straining its hocks, popping its knees, feathering over its forefeet in this hellish parody of a farrier’s worst “breakover” nightmare, all the while hyperextending its front tendons and pasterns? This “gait” is a recipe for crippling, nothing more; I think the best analogy might be the foot-binding that was eventually outlawed in China!
Time for EVERYONE to INSIST that the TWHBEA either return to the roots of the breed or just plain cease to exist. Perhaps a “reboot” with a new breed organization is what it takes.
Hey, they’re already bitching about how they’ve had to downsize; let’s take it to the next level! This is INSANE.[/QUOTE]
With you all the way on this one! The good roots are still there. All this crap started when they tried to mimic the ASB (nothing against the asb) but ASB’s are not swinging gaited horses - they high step and prance by genes! And then the Morgans went for it, and the Arabians… ANd then the ASB went for higher and higher bending knees…
More to a horse then how much knee and hock they wave about or how much the hind overstrides the fore. The Stacked TWH is a good example of how blind those judges can get - - They completely lost sight of the horse.
And McConnell is a very good example of how blind they are - they could not differentiate a well trained horse from an abused horse. THAT is the real travesty of this exposure by HSUS. He was not some back woods trainer!!! He was very high up in the ranks of this group!!!
Somehow, there must be a medium where we can outlaw cruelty without giving government entities too much power over private property. I’ve seen both sides of this issue and it is scary.
I went to a tack sale about 15 years ago at a Saddlebred farm. While walking through the barns, the trainer asked me if I’d like to see one go, because they were doing demonstrations.
There was a chute in the barn where the horses were worked back and forth. A teenager came down the cute on a gorgeous chestnut Saddlebred, and the ‘trainer’ jumped out from behind the tack room door and blew a fire extinguisher at the horse.
I shouted, ‘Stop that! What are you doing?’ and he replied, 'The horses think it’s a game, and it gets them up for the show ring."
I left, but before I did, I said, “That’s not a game, that’s animal cruelty.” I know all trainers aren’t like that in the Saddlebred world, but it gave me a sickening insight to the depths some trainers will go to elicit an unnatural, man-made way of going in a horse in the name of ‘performance.’
I also agree that we are on a slippery slope when it comes to letting the government start dictating how we care for our animals. Our town actually had a Board of Health member who threatened to have a group of us arrested at a Board meeting simply for asking for proof about the ‘numerous’ complaints one Board Member claimed to have received about horses. They effectively silenced us and were caught laughing about it after the meeting when the video tape was still running. Horse owners in my town went through a year and a half of pure hell with those two Board Members retaliating against specific horse owners in town by misusing thier position of authority to try to regulate small farms out of existence through a hand picked subcommittee to review and rewrite town regulations.
A year into the subcommittee’s ‘review,’ the Board of Health member who instigated the whole thing finally admitted under questioning from one of her own committee members that there were actually NO documented complaints about horses at the Board of Health. But that didn’t stop her fellow anti-horse board member from publishing his own, personal anti-horse treatise as an official Board of Health document, filled with lies about horses spreading disease, fouling our water, etc., on our local Board of Health website and in two newspapers. It was a horrifying abuse of power to advance personal agendas against specific residents, but it had a chilling effect on all of us.
Our horse community spent thousands of hours fighting this witch hunt and we were successful, but what a horrible waste of our time and tax payer money. It was a frightening window into what can happen when someone who doensn’t know anything about horses has the right to ‘regulate’ how we care for our animals.
[QUOTE=CFFarm;6327407]
Not to side track this thread but horses do perform dressage moves out in the field all the time. Classical dressage sought to allow the horse to move as at liberty with a rider. IMHO it’s morfing into man’s idea of what it should look like (and indeed looking more like saddle seat every year-along with the severe training methods). Big Lick has abuses built right into the discipline. As I’ve asked before “how can anyone find it beautiful??!!”
Maybe if these old men learned to actually ride…[/QUOTE]
Not all can perform all the moves and not all those that are shown can perform all the moves. The trainers/riders teach them and many use devices and various artificial aides,shoes etc,to do so.
I cant give you the date, but within the last ten years there was an uprising within the membership of TWHBEA. Some anti-soring folks ran for board positions. Either enough of them didnt get elected or they were not enough to sway the focus of the TWHBEA. Many members chose not to renew thier memberships to send a message to the TWHBEA. Members had to weigh what was more important - belong to TWHBEA and be able to vote or not renew and hit them in the pocketbook. The message was sent, the coffers at TWHBEA shrank.
TWHBEA tried some image control. Go to their website then and you saw full body BLers everywhere you clicked. Go now and you see head and neck shots. There is reason the TWHBEA still condones BL. Look at the show records of the board members. Maybe the good guys need to rejoin and vote them out, but to hordes of exmembers the thought of sending TWHBEA $$$$ for memberships and registrations is a dealbreaker.
This makes it hard to change TWHBEA from within.
People do keep in mind the HPA applies to all horses in the United States if you put in language that bans pads and limits weight on shoes it will apply to every single horse in the United States. Oh, you want to start putting in loopholes to allow therapeutic shoeing? Well there is a loophole that everyone can exploit. Who is to decide the horse needs gaited shoeing? Oh you want to limit it to just gaited horses (some are not bred for knee action at all) or just saddle seat horses (some of the gaited breeds that have been subjected to soring are shown western), well what about all the other breeds and sports shod specially for man’s enjoyment? Dressage horses are shod to enhance their movement, reiners wear sliding plates, eventers, jumpers, and fox hunters put caulks on their horses shoes so they can gallop about and jump fences that sometimes kill horses.
:yes:
[QUOTE=Renae;6327456]
People do keep in mind the HPA applies to all horses in the United States if you put in language that bans pads and limits weight on shoes it will apply to every single horse in the United States. Oh, you want to start putting in loopholes to allow therapeutic shoeing? Well there is a loophole that everyone can exploit. Who is to decide the horse needs gaited shoeing? Oh you want to limit it to just gaited horses (some are not bred for knee action at all) or just saddle seat horses (some of the gaited breeds that have been subjected to soring are shown western), well what about all the other breeds and sports shod specially for man’s enjoyment? Dressage horses are shod to enhance their movement, reiners wear sliding plates, eventers, jumpers, and fox hunters put caulks on their horses shoes so they can gallop about and jump fences that sometimes kill horses.[/QUOTE]
:yes:
Fairfax- So now those of us that have decided to not register our TWHBEA horses in our names, our horses are going to go to slaughter because of it? That’s a nasty thing to say.
FYI- Just because some of us are putting our money where our mouth is and not giving the TWHBEA financial support in the form of membership/registration fees doesn’t mean our horses are now “GRADE” nor does it mean nobody wants them (as in: will be shipped to slaughter immediately following our demise).
Don’t presume to know what provisions we have or have not made for our horses, and don’t presume that just because we’ve shunned our breed registry our horses are worthless. As us trail riders like to say “you can’t ride the papers” and a GOOD unregistered trail horse can hold just as much value as a registered one.
I’d like to think that there are enough Walking Horse owners out there now turning their backs on the TWHBEA and their practices that it is actually making a difference. They are bemoaning the downfall of the breed because of finances after all, aren’t they? Surely the people who are refusing to maintain membership with them and give them money in the form of registration fees is playing some small part in that.
I’ve been trying to stay open-minded to your side of the debate especially since I’ve been boarding at a Saddlebred barn for 15 years owned by a lovely woman who takes excellent care of her horses, and have seen how action devices CAN be used in a humane manner for training purposes. But when you make asinine statements like that it just makes me want to flip you the bird.
[QUOTE=Renae;6327456]
People do keep in mind the HPA applies to all horses in the United States if you put in language that bans pads and limits weight on shoes it will apply to every single horse in the United States. Oh, you want to start putting in loopholes to allow therapeutic shoeing? Well there is a loophole that everyone can exploit. Who is to decide the horse needs gaited shoeing? Oh you want to limit it to just gaited horses (some are not bred for knee action at all) or just saddle seat horses (some of the gaited breeds that have been subjected to soring are shown western), well what about all the other breeds and sports shod specially for man’s enjoyment? Dressage horses are shod to enhance their movement, reiners wear sliding plates, eventers, jumpers, and fox hunters put caulks on their horses shoes so they can gallop about and jump fences that sometimes kill horses.[/QUOTE]
I think it is worth the work to sort it out legally. For too long the approach has been hands off.
Or do you think the other breed organizations can pressure the TWH into some sort of compliance??? I do not think they can - cause they all want to continue to just play in their own sand box. If you do nothing - others (HSUS) will be doing it for you.
Overwelmingly, the TWH horse has paid the highest price for this approach to governing. ANd keep in mind - when you enter a show ring, you play by the rules. Just someone forgot to set some rules for the TWH.
Oh I work within the rules, unfortunately every single time this subject comes up every single breed that is shown with a patent leather browband gets thrown under the bus, never mind that the trotting breeds are NOT sored. Earlier on this thread the Saddlebred people were told to butt out, but now people are throwing around allegations of abuse of Saddlebreds in what is a TWH soring thread.
[QUOTE=Renae;6327456]
People do keep in mind the HPA applies to all horses in the United States if you put in language that bans pads and limits weight on shoes it will apply to every single horse in the United States. Oh, you want to start putting in loopholes to allow therapeutic shoeing? Well there is a loophole that everyone can exploit. Who is to decide the horse needs gaited shoeing? Oh you want to limit it to just gaited horses (some are not bred for knee action at all) or just saddle seat horses (some of the gaited breeds that have been subjected to soring are shown western), well what about all the other breeds and sports shod specially for man’s enjoyment? Dressage horses are shod to enhance their movement, reiners wear sliding plates, eventers, jumpers, and fox hunters put caulks on their horses shoes so they can gallop about and jump fences that sometimes kill horses.[/QUOTE]
Therapeutic pads don’t hold a candle to BL packages, nor do any other pad used in other disciplines that I’ve ever seen. Have you seen the size of a BL package? They could reduce the size of BL packages by half and still not come close to threatening the use of therapeutic pads in other sports/disciplines. Same goes with the weight of the shoes, reducing it by half would in no way hinder the use of slider plates or other specialty shoes. There is plenty of room to at least REDUCE these packages to a reasonable size and weight without having any impact at all on other disciplines. I don’t see how regulating pad size and shoe weight would have any bearing whatsoever on the use of caulks, that’s apples and oranges.
[QUOTE=Renae;6327456]
People do keep in mind the HPA applies to all horses in the United States if you put in language that bans pads and limits weight on shoes it will apply to every single horse in the United States. [/QUOTE]
The HPA Act of 1970 specifically addresses gaited horses now and i dont see where anyone wants to change the language to include issues with any other breeds. Just because you are worried it may, does not make it so.
Mornin Ladies and Gentlemen;
I don’t know if you can tell (the old timers here) that I have aged a bit and mellowed some
+
With that said, I don’t want to get into a running gun battle with anyone…so I just gonna say what I mean…and mean what I say…
There are a couple here that will have you follow them down worm holes, around and around rabbit trails, in their attempts to side track and argue with people about silly little things…did he have on 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch pads? etc~~~ against people who are actually trying to do something about the current issue of trying to stop abuse…with these awesome animals…
These couple of discontents, apologists, would argue with a possum (Lonesome Dove)
This is one of the more sophisticated group I belong to, in saying that…please…this ain’t about me, my horse, my family, or whether I should have or not shown in 1999, it is not about them either~~
So when you see them yak, yakking, don’t engage them, just let their post get pushed further and further up until it falls off the page…
This is all about the horse…not your horse in the back yard, or your trail riding horse or your show horse…those horses have, I like to describe as~~~ having been blessed/lucky enough to get a stall on the Ark…
Its those horses out there still being abused, sored and would want so much to be on the Ark, with every movement you make, click of a key in support somewhere out there…you are making room for another horse to get on that dry, food filled, safe environment of the Ark.
WHAT? close to 20,000 views in 4 days!!! YIKES!! has any other topic took off so much here before, I don’t know…but this has struck us all ~~~
I think this is gonna be a very busy week, you don’t wanna miss these ground shaking changes and events…so stay tuned
[QUOTE=Renae;6327488]
Oh I work within the rules, unfortunately every single time this subject comes up every single breed that is shown with a patent leather browband gets thrown under the bus, never mind that the trotting breeds are NOT sored. Earlier on this thread the Saddlebred people were told to butt out, but now people are throwing around allegations of abuse of Saddlebreds in what is a TWH soring thread.[/QUOTE]
Well, Saddlebreds folks (Fairfax)continue to bring up the worry of losing their pads, shoes and action devices - which they feel they will die without.
But face it. The sad truth of the matter is the real cause of the curelty to the TWH is trying to get them to something they can not do: gait with their foot up over a rail and a hind foot landing 20+ inches in front of the fore. The only way they can do this is with soring and action devices worn in the show ring.
So it is not just soring that is the problem with the TWH - it is the extreme action devices. You got to look at the action device. ANd that looking is a threat to all those disciplines dependent on an action device to induce a high step.
Like it or not - they (all the other saddle seat diciplines)are all a part of what has been allowed to happen to the TWH. Those stacks of pads are cruel - and they turned and looked the other way. They did nothing. ANd mostly they did not look at their own practices.
It is a good time for all diciplines to examine their practices.
BTW a roping saddle, a cowboy hat and sparkling shirts and and saddle pads are not what makes Western, western. It is still saddleseat with a change of tack only.
To The Preacher and family:
Thank You!!!
[QUOTE=WalkInTheWoods;6327492]
The HPA Act of 1970 specifically addresses gaited horses now and i dont see where anyone wants to change the language to include issues with any other breeds. Just because you are worried it may, does not make it so.[/QUOTE]
The way I understand it, no it does not only apply to gaited horses. There was intent to have it be that way, but as it was written as an interstate commerce law that technically it applies to all horses, and that the TWH contingent at the time fought tooth and nail to keep out language that would apply it to only their horses.
Mornin Preacher
I get a little tongue tied when you post because i have so much admiration for you, the stand you took, the good you have done for TWHs. Keep us on track and informed.
Thank you !
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