No one will really admit to when soring first started, but the first horse to lift and extend and travel very fast around the show ring was Talk of the Town–the only horse to ever have won the Celebration WGC stake three times and he did it three years in a row–1951,52 &53. It is interesting to note that his abilities has been thought so little of earlier in his career that he had been gelded so the THREE-TIME World Grand Champion TWH left no offspring.
I am not old enough to have seen this horse perform, but I have spoken to several people and had family members who were old enough to have seen him and DID actually see him perform in the show ring.All of them say his speed was amazing as was his lift and reach in front. And all agreed that every exhibitor and trainer wanted a horse that moved like Talk of the Town.
And that is when trainers started wanting to ad pads and more weight-- and that is probably when some of them discovered, either by accident or through purposful experimentation, that adding some “hot stuff” to a horse’s pasterns would produce a “lik” similar to ToT’s.
For those who haven’t been involved with walkers as long as I and my family as well as my late husband and his family, I can assure you that there once wasn’t a strict “division” between “show” walkers and the rest of the TWHs. It was very common, and my family often talked about this as did ny husband’s family, for horses that were used regularly during the week for regular riding or driving, or to work cattle or even plow to be cleaned up on Saturday and taken to the shows, especially the little one-night shows.
Only very few horses, mainly those with the trainers in TN or the few with training barns were kept “exclusively” to be used as show horses. This started a litlte back when walking horses showed without pads or bell boots, or later chains, rollers and etc. But once all of that stuff got started, then almost any horse used as “show” horses were not ridden or used for any other thing than “showing” because really they could not be used for any other thing.
Can you imagine using a built-up padded horse to go for an afternoon trail ride, or to herd cattle or draw a cart on the road?
I believe, from talking with “old timers” that “something started” as far as the soring as early as the mid-1950s, but it wasn’t that noticable until the 1960s when you had some horses on the line up at the end of some classes with noticable trickles of blood on their hooves.
Along with that came loss of hair on the pasterns, which the trainers attributed to workig the horses with weighted bell boots. The boots wee supposed to be there to protect the horse from “calking” or cutting the rear of its fron’t hooves with its hind hooves – but many people suspected that these boots also had something to do with the horses “reaching out” further in front as well.
You could recognize a former show walker by their caloused and, in some cases almost naked, front pasterns. These abuses which left such visible proof f what was happening to those horses are what prompted the passaaage of the HPA-- especially the part of the HPA that is called the “scar rule”
And yes, through the years there have been several “expose’s” about what was going on behind the scenes-- first in magazines like Sports Illustrated and others. But what many of us thought would be the “big breakthrough” story was the CNN special report that aired in 1986.
Well there was some uproar and the denials, etc. started as Guilherme has mentioned. But NOTHING has ever come of this as far as real reform because each time the entrenched BL part of the show world, which obviously has a stranglehold on the largest and oldest breed registry the TWHBEA as well as most of the oldest and largest shows was able to outlast the critics until the furor dies down.
I am hoping this time things will FINALLY be different. Time will tell. But already the good ole boys are doing their dog and pony and smoke and mirror show that they are so good at doing. I am glad that Roy Exum is continuing to keep the issue of soring before the public with his column and articles.
But really for any REAL and lasting change to happen, the stacks of pads, heavy shoes, hoofbands and actions HAVE to be prohibited in the show ring and on the show grounds.It isn’t just the soring that is bad for the TWH. All that junk on their feet is bad for them, too and bad for the breed’s image.
