Tennessee Walking Horse Soring Issue *Update post 1*

[equinedriver]

[QUOTE=sqwim01;6321106]
I knew W/W Trailmaster, aka “Duke”, he was a prime example of a cruelty-free trained horse, as are the majority of the horses and trainers of this breed. I do not and will never condone the cruel methods used by some trainers, but for me it is difficult to stand by and watch such a wonderful animal and their cruelty-free owners and trainers as a whole be punished for the acts of a few trainers. The trainers convicted should be tried and punished, but the public as a whole needs to be properly educated in the fact that the majority of horses are, as a general, are not abused in any way and that there are governing groups with the sole purpose to protect the animal from this kind of harm.[/QUOTE]

I wish this were true but it’s not. THey tested 50 some horses for foreign substances at the last nationals and EVERYONE came back positive… this is not a isolated few trainers as you would hope we would believe, but permeates the entire group. Get real, admit it, and CLEAN IT UP.

[bayou_bengal]

[QUOTE=GaitedGloryRider;6321511]
The TWHBEA has been talking out of both sides of their mouth for years. It’s a wink wink and a nudge nudge as they, the same good ole boys soring and stewarding and abusing sit atop their perches in the TWHBEA telling everyone that asks “nothing to see here, we’ve got it under control, nobody does THAT anymore…”

So long as the same people doing the soring remain in the upper echelon of the association you’d have to be a damn fool to believe anything that comes from their mouths. I never transferred registration of any of my Walkers to my name, never joined the TWHBEA or SSHBEA, I’d just as soon wipe my fat behind with my horses’ papers as have my name put on them.

The TWHBEA and SSHBEA need to do some serious spring cleaning within their ranks if they really and truly want to get rid of soring.[/QUOTE]

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[511]

Why don’t they just founder the horses? It would achieve the same effect as chemical soreing. That is until their hooves fell off but with what I saw I think the so called ‘trainers’ would make artificial hooves for a class and keep riding the horses for that prized blue ribbon.

If I had a horse in as much pain as the ones I saw on the expose I would have them put down that day.

[Dispatcher]

@bayou_bengal;6321490

If I am not mistaken Jackie McConnell has ridden at least one if not several TWHs to the win the title of World Grand champion TWH. He has also won many many Championship classes on many many different horses in many many different TWH shows throughout the country for at least 20 years or MORE.

I believe he has been named “Trainer of the Year” at least once by the TWH professional trainers’ association-- which is full of people who have
received numerous “tickets” and suspensions for violations of the Horse Protection Act.

He may have even been chosen to actually serve as one of the three judges at the Celebration or at other major TWH shows several times.

holy crap. And no one would blow the whistle. folks HAD to know what was going on.

Makes this whole scene even more dispicable.

[GaitedGloryRider]

[QUOTE=5;6321540]
Why don’t they just founder the horses? It would achieve the same effect as chemical soreing. That is until their hooves fell off but with what I saw I think the so called ‘trainers’ would make artificial hooves for a class and keep riding the horses for that prized blue ribbon.

If I had a horse in as much pain as the ones I saw on the expose I would have them put down that day.[/QUOTE]

Well just foundering them would probably take all the fun out of it for the sick sadistic pricks. It’s “training” after all, they’ve perfected their craft and take a lot of pride in it. :no:

[bayou_bengal]

Here is an excerpt form the story about Jackie McConnell’s original arrest from a NEWSpaper–

“McConnell was arrested at his barn in Collierville near Memphis Thursday morning. Jackie is the brother of three-time World Grand Champion trainer and Walking Horse Trainer of the Year Jimmy McConnell.”

There are several very complenentary articles about Jackie Mccommell in various issues of “The Voice of The Tennessee Walking Horse”-- the official breed magazine of the TWHBEA. Just “google” him and they come up.

If you read any of the articles, you will find that several known HPA violators are mentioned in that magazine over and over again in glowing terms- without a hint of a mention about their violations of the HPA.

This ought to let anyone know just where the TWHBEA stands with regard to disciplining HPA violators.

[WalkInTheWoods]

did i already give out contact info to thank ABC ? my mind is getting scrambled

http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346&cat=Nightline

[Guilherme]

[QUOTE=Dispatcher;6321447]
Oh LOL! I thought we were talking about inspectors, not journalists…[/QUOTE]

Inspectors have to know the “rest of the story” too!!! :lol:

Knowing how soring is done, in some detail, is essential to being able to identify it with sufficiency to support a citation.

In reality, any good horseman with a decent eye can be trained to spot a sored horse from a grandstand. It’s really not that hard. The DQP, though, has to have make a very specific finding and then be able to support it (in the event the owner, trainer, exhibitor, etc. challenges their finding). In this sense it’s a like a police officer making an allegation that a person is driving a motor vehicle while impaired. It’s nice to have a Breathalizer reading, but impairments from marijuana, prescription drugs, over the counter meds, etc. don’t register on the tape. That does not mean the driver isn’t impaired, only that alcohol is not the impairment. The DQP has to be able to say, under oath, “I found the horse to be sored as defined in the HPA and here’s why…”

By the by, if I can see a sored horse from a grandstand why can’t the judge see one from the center ring? The question is, of course, rhetorical.

This has been going on since the mid-1950s. The TWHBEA could solve the problem any time it wants to. It doesn’t want to. It’s under the control of the very people who benefit from the Sore Lick show circuit.

G.

[Guilherme]

[QUOTE=5;6321540]
Why don’t they just founder the horses? It would achieve the same effect as chemical soreing. That is until their hooves fell off but with what I saw I think the so called ‘trainers’ would make artificial hooves for a class and keep riding the horses for that prized blue ribbon.

If I had a horse in as much pain as the ones I saw on the expose I would have them put down that day.[/QUOTE]

“Road founder” is a common way to “sore” a horse, particularly the Light Shod ones. It’s difficult to identify. In that it’s like many forms of “pressure shoeing,” where the shoe is part of the system of inflicting pain.

G.

[bird4416]

@oldernewbie;6321524

I guess I am amazed that it has taken this long for the abuse of the poor TWHs to reach some sort of mainstream attention. The bill was passed in 1970! This is not a recent development but I am glad that it has finally hit the general media.

The video shown in the ABC report is stomach turning enough. The HSUS video with even more evidence is truly enough to make a person cry:

http://forthetnwalkinghorse.blogspot.com/2012/05/video-hsus-undercover-mcconnell-video.html

Poor poor horses! Shameful, awful people.

And when they tell folks this is an isolated practice, fire this information back at 'em:

http://forthetnwalkinghorse.blogspot.com/2012/05/articles-and-presentations-fosh.html

That video makes me want to puke. How could someone do that to an animal? They have to be sick sadistic bastards.

[Dispatcher]

I have to know when it comes to soring. How long are the horses in that excructiating pain? From the time they are wrapped? Is it hours? days?

[bayou_bengal]

Really, I have a hard time remembering which McConnell brother won what and did what. I do know at one time in the 1980s they hauled together to shows, and I had the impression that they trained together as well. They were very well liked by show management because between them they often brought 20-30 horses to some of the bigger shows and these horses were often entered in more than one class-- so they could really “make” your show for you if they showed up with a couple of their huge semis full of horses.

We showed in the flat shod classes only, back in the day when even the larger shows had not yet added many of the flat shod classes- especially down South.

We attended some of the same shows and show-related activities, but as flat shod exhibitors with a Louisiana trainer, we were hardly considered in the same league as the BL people.We showed throughout the Southeast and Texas and even exhibited in the flatshod classes in the Celebration. We were outspoken opponents of soring and the BL so, naturally, our horses didn’t ever win a ribbon THERE.

We won our fair share in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Strolling Jim Heyday in Wartrace-- a flat shod only show. BUT we NEVER got ANY ribbon at all at the Celebration.

After someone took us aside to explain why we would NEVER win a ribbon at the Celebration unless we “shut up” about the soring, we decided to quit attending or exhibitiing there. Eventually we dropped our membership in the TWHBEA and quit bothering to register our horses with them, either. We decided not to spend money to support such an evil, rotten, crooked thing as anything associated with the TWHBEA-Celebration and affiliated groups.

We realized that they could not and would not be reformed from within. I am glad to see that FINALLY the USDA has actually begun to do something about the abuse in the TWH show world. I am glad that the national news media like ABC has finally paid attention. Back in the 1980s CNN did produce an expose’ of the BL TWH world but it didn’t get any traction.

[bayou_bengal]

[QUOTE=Dispatcher;6321619]
I have to know when it comes to soring. How long are the horses in that excructiating pain? From the time they are wrapped? Is it hours? days?[/QUOTE]

MOST of the time while they are actively showing. There is a show almost any weekend somewhere in the Southeast or Texas- and probably in Kentucky.

The point of all the chemistry and wraps is to produce the tenderness WITHOUT producing visible open wounds or sores.

The horse thus “touched” will be tender enough to even perforn without the addition of the “action devices” or chains, but the use of these just accentuates the effect of the chemicals.

[Dispatcher]

@bayou_bengal;6321635

MOST of the time while they are actively showing. There is a show almost any weekend somewhere in the Southeast or Texas- and probably in Kentucky.

The point of all the chemistry and wraps is to produce the tenderness WITHOUT producing visible open wounds or sores.

The horse thus “touched” will be tender enough to even perforn without the addition of the “action devices” or chains, but the use of these just accentuates the effect of the chemicals.

If they are suffering most of the time, like that horse down in his stall in the video, how do they even get the horse out? let alone, loaded in a trailer and into the show ring?

That downed horse in the video wasn’t going ANYWHERE unless dragged or prodded.

Tenderness on the pasterns is one thing. Excruciating pain, enough to make the horse go down, is completely different.

[bayou_bengal]

[QUOTE=Dispatcher;6321652]
If they are suffering most of the time, like that horse down in his stall in the video, how do they even get the horse out? let alone, loaded in a trailer and into the show ring?

That downed horse in the video wasn’t going ANYWHERE unless dragged or prodded.

Tenderness on the pasterns is one thing. Excruciating pain, enough to make the horse go down, is completely different.[/QUOTE]

They are not suffering to the degree that the horse who was down in his stall was-- but they are suffering to some extent.

It was very common back whe we were showing-- if you could get past the drapes and stablehands-- in the stall area of these big show barns at the various shows-- especially after the nightly shows were over to see horses who were lying down actually moaning in the stalls.

I know their “security” becasme increasingly viligant from about 1991 on about letting people, even fellow exhibitors, “cut through” using their their draped off aisles.

They used all kinds of things to give temoprary relief to these horses incliding shots of novacane just in the skin with little needles like diabetics use and spray-on or wipe on numbing agents.

The horse down in its stall was either accidently “over sored” or it was a young horse just getting used to the “touch” and thus more sensitive. Sometimes a horse just is too sensitive and it doesn’t “make” as a show horse.

If it is lucky, it gets sold as a “pleasure” or “trail” horse. If unlucky, it ends up in a feedlot somewhere before being shipped to slaughter. Remember the thread last year about the horse trailer full of horses that were from TN that overturned? I would bet there were disgarded TWH show horses in there as well as other horses because the “farm” they were shipped from is in the heart of TWH country.

[Jumpin_Horses]

how do we make this **** STOP?

what can we do as individuals to make it stop NOW?

[Dispatcher]

so incredibly sad for the horses, having to suffer so much physical pain.

[europa]

There is a special very hot place in hell for these people.

They better never cross paths with me is all I can tell you. What disgusting excuses for cowards!

I just want a Big Lick person to come on here and say something to justify this crap…come on…bring it.

[chaos-10]

[QUOTE=Dispatcher;6320245]
How in the name of God can those big fat slobs do that to an animal?

Let’s think about this. Are these sub-human people married? Do they actually have wives that condone what they do? Or do the wives bear the same fate?

Those DIRTY, EFFING, LOW LIFE, DEFECTIVE males. They are not men, they are some subspecies of the male in the human race.

Just WHY? don’t say money. There is another motive. It’s visciousness and a sub-human culture. I could MAYBE understand if this happened is some other country. But the United States? This is a view of some Americna people that have very low IQ’s and very little education.

It’s not about the money. It’s about being a defective cruel human being.[/QUOTE]
The wives are more often than not, in on the whole thing!:eek:

[Dispatcher]

@europa;6321709

I just want a Big Lick person to come on here and say something to justify this crap…come on…bring it.

They ususally do join in to say that they don’t sore and the chains and what not don’t hurt the horse. They compare their chains to a human wearing a bracelet. And they NEVER sore their horses…(maybe that part is literally true since they are not trainers and it’s the trainer who does the soring…)