[hurleycane]

Somewhere back on one of these threads, it was mentioned that TWHBEA (the breed registry) wants the world to point its fingers else where in this matter. They claim they are not the governing bodies in this soring stacked chained and pained show mess and they point to trainer associations, show organizations as the folks responsible.

Well, since NONE of these horses can be shown without valid TWH registration papers, I think it time TWHBEA be reminded yes indeed they are a major player in this horse soring game.

The HPA (Federal Horse Protection Act) specifies its assessment of penalties (fines and jail) are not in any way limiting the hands of the associated show organizations from applying their own penalties and suspensions.

I think it is high time TWHBEA take their role much more seriously. Again since none of the horses can be shown without papers - they need to consider things such as revoking papers of sored animals. It can be done for a specific length of time. It can have a process by which the horse can be reinstated if housed with a verified non soring facility.

What would a verified non soring facility be???? Well, one that is open to visitors, permits an auditor to come watch and record and queston and observe demonstrations of horsemanship etc.

Many of them around me.

Too much $$ to do this??? Well maybe TWHBEA should sell ownership of the Tennessee Walking Horse to another MO Betta association.

[WalkInTheWoods]

Preacher - Your humanity and wisdom and moral compass shine through your words. Glad to know you if just on this monitor. Was just about to post the following but your words made me sit back in the chair for a bit.

Posting this again

Oregon Congressman Schrader addresses the USDA's Horse Protection Act and the issue of "soring" 5-17-2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dx3dvYMH-k

This would be a great time to support Congressman Schrader since he spoke to the house 5-17-12. Now nobody in Congress can say they dont know what soring is. The soring roaches run when the light (USDA inspection )is turned on. They run, the owners, who have been paying for training for months dont get their horse shown = unhappy owners who cant say they werent aware of why their horse didnt show. This can be done NOW without changing a law ! It will take a lot of time and effort to pursuade the HIOs and breed associations to ban stacks, but more frequent USDA inspections can have an immediate effect.

Your Congressman
Interactive map to click on to get contact info for your state's congressmen
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/


I'm snailmailed my state and will email others something along these lines:

In view of the upcoming elections I would like get your opinion of this:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/vide...abuse-16365454

Oregon Congressman Kurt Shrader addressed this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dx3dvYMH-k

Will you please increase financial support to the USDA to assure that the HPA inspection program is adequately funded ? I would like to hear your views on this matter.

[GaitedGloryRider]

I'm very much a forgive and move on kind of person but COME ON. McConnell has been caught 13 times prior to this. Like the thief who isn't sorry in the least that he stole but is very much sorry he got caught I don't believe for one minute Jackie McConnell is the least bit remorseful for all the pain and torture he's inflicted on who knows how many horses over the years. His sense of self-preservation is likely kicking in and I'll bet any "remorse" he's feeling is over the fact that this may very well be the time his past catches up with him and he may actually have to pay for him crimes this time around.

Thirteen previous suspensions. No way of knowing how many times he got away with it. At any point over the years he could have simply put the bat down, tossed aside his cattle prod, thrown out the chemicals and stopped torturing these horses. He did not. It took him getting splashed across the national media to put an end to his abuse (and who's to say he won't resume his ways again once the hubbub has died down? He's certainly set that precedent in the past).

The man is a slime ball and deserves prison time. I'm not inclined to think any other way until his actions start showing otherwise.

And for Pete's sake, he hasn't even bothered issuing an apology!!! Forgiveness?!?! Nope, not in this stage of the game. Heck even Michael Vick APOLOGIZED!!!

[WalkInTheWoods]

kwill and ggr I agree - i might forgive him some day - through bars.

hurleycane - good thought. we need to strategize.

[CarrieK]

Drove the 100 miles South to Chattanooga and the Federal Court house

Thanks for sharing your observations on the proceedings.

[Isabeau Z Solace]

Huh... here's an interesting video about people who fought to show a 'light shod' horse in the world champ class as the '99 Celebration. Video is long, 39 minutes. And you have to watch a bit before you can see the horse in the show ring. I can't watch the whole video now, but I am pretty interested to find out how it all turned out. Also, apparently first time someone who was not white showed in the class?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhSP6...eature=related

[katarine]

Isabeau, there are loads of top notch and well respected black trainers in TWH land. Heck, even Jimmy McConnell was EEOC enough to hire black guys to work in his barn and help him abuse those horses.

It's bad enough- trying to spin it into something else? Really?

[subk]

I just went to the TWHSA site to look at some rules and found the web page for the "DPQ Services." http://www.twhsa.com/DQP.htm

The link for more information on the the Horse Protection Commission takes you to a Japanesse porn site.

I can't decide if this is really funny or really sad.

[Kwill]

Yes, let's please keep this on topic, the issue at hand is bad enough.

It's very hard to show a horse in a division, ANY division, where it appears different than the other competitors -- that goes for any horse show in the land. When quarter horses were peanut rolling, the higher headed horses never won -- they had to change the standard to poll at the withers before it changed (and we all should know the abuses that went on there to get the heads down, but I am not derailing, I promise).

It's great to put your point across, but until the division is changed, fighting to show a horse that doesn't conform to the what the judges want is a losing battle.

It has to be a change of an entire outlook about what is acceptable.

I am in the camp that says limits on the amount of weight and type of shoeing that would be allowed would go a long way to solving some of this problem. Every breed with a park horse type has gone through this, and come out OK -- there must be hope for this walking horse division as well.

[WalkInTheWoods]

Huh... here's an interesting video about people who fought to show a 'light shod' horse in the world champ class as the '99 Celebration. Video is long, 39 minutes. And you have to watch a bit before you can see the horse in the show ring. I can't watch the whole video now, but I am pretty interested to find out how it all turned out. Also, apparently first time someone who was not white showed in the class?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhSP6...eature=related

It was groundbreaking.! And Nathaniel Jackson is The Preacher who posts here !

[mayhew]

"I'm telling you, you're never going to be able to eliminate everything in the industry, it's the same thing in any sport, like why did Roger Clemons take drugs? Some people are going to cheat," Howard said'.

Note that what he began to say was "People cheat." He corrected himself and said "some people cheat." Big difference for the industry in that "some."

[WalkInTheWoods]

We do need a good strategy to urge the HIOs to make those shoeing changes.

[aarpaso]

lets play it smart,send the sentencing judge everything we can about GOOD OLE BOY JACKIE,then ask the Question do you really think this man is going to STOP abusing the horses he trains.

caught 13 times

could not be the trainer of record at one show so he conned the Trainer Assoc in to giving good ole boy Dockery a LIC to train.

works for people who stand and watch him abuse,(Privett,McGowan)

we have enough imformation so this judge can see the TRUTH we just need to share it,

now if this judge owns BL horses well lets just say we can hope he /she throws ole Jackie under the bus to shut us up.

[hurleycane]

I just went to the TWHSA site to look at some rules and found the web page for the "DPQ Services." http://www.twhsa.com/DQP.htm

The link for more information on the the Horse Protection Commission takes you to a Japanesse porn site.

I can't decide if this is really funny or really sad.

H.Y.S.T.E.R.I.C.A.L

[hurleycane]

A strategy and organized approach would be the way to go. THere are organizations that have been waiting for the opportunity to reform the TWH folks. Perhaps linking up with them would be good. Like the National Walking Horse Association:

http://www.nwha.com/news2012/2012NightlineResponse.pdf

And I have to admit this is not the first time the world's attention was on this issue. Again and again this carousel keeps circling with the same poor excuses and abuses. And I am here to say we will see the grotesque attachments continue again and again round and round and very legal in that very public ring in a little town in Tennessee.

WHY?

[aarpaso]

thats tru until BEDFORD County Tn. wakes up.
even seeing it for themselves they turn a blind eye for the $$$$

how sad.

[katarine]

Kadenz, the fact is that the fly spray "Endure" can test as a positive for 'banned substance". So can some completely benign shampoos. Normal stuff, that tests positive as bad stuff.

She is only saying that 'some'' of the tickets are bogus, just like my example of a legal 6oz chain until you show in it and it gets dirty. Imagine a legal splint boot until you galloped cross country in it and it got wet, and then it was illegally heavy so you got penalized. That would be coo coo, but it happens.

Neither she nor I are apologists for the atrocities, we are, however, peeling the onion a bit if you're interested. that's all.

[Kadenz]

Those who believe that banning pads and action devices will get rid of soring are sorely mistaken.

I am still confused how a horse can be inspected before going in to an arena and is found to be 'clean' and then found to be in violation for scar rule after the class is over. Scars are not gone one minute and back another. Watch a horse knock anywhere below the knee with a hoof wet with polish and now you have a foreign substance which is illegal....fly sprays, residue, etc. These horses pretty much need to be washed with plain water and have nothing brought near them besides the saddle to keep from being in violation for foreign substances.

My own horse is older and has scars around his front pasterns from being a ding bat a few years ago and getting caught in a fence. You can hardly see them unless you are digging around but it is enough that I will never show him in an inspected show ever.

I'd be curious to see horses in other high level sports have samples taken and tested to the TWH standard. How many do you think would come up in violation?

I think this all-or-nothing type of thinking is wrong-headed. Banning acid from a horse's pasterns won't make fly spray illegal; that would be utterly ridiculous.

I trained and showed with 2 FEI-level dressage trainers and managed their barn for 6 years. Trust me, we didn't have gallon jugs of Kopertox, salicylic acid, or "wound grease" lying around. We didn't dope our horses, and we weren't the only clean ones, trust me. NORMAL riding does not require a row of washracks lined with chemicals and home-mixed "juice" to "fix" the horses.

When we show, our horses are ALWAYS subject to a urine test. The kind of skin abrasions and scarring I saw on the USDA's slideshow of the scar-rule violations in one year? If ANYONE had a horse like that at ANY dressage show or 3-day event, you can BET either a TD, a steward, or the judge would say something and investigate and possibly eliminate the horse. And ya know what, I've never seen anyone "go rogue" and get someone thrown out for anything that wasn't actual abuse.

And yeah, when we wash horses, we DO use "plain water." WTF are these people smoking where an operation like the one shown in those videos becomes "normal"???

It certainly doesn't make it ok, but I still think it's a crucial difference that when you DO see a doping issue in a performance discipline, it's almost ALWAYS to MASK pain, not CREATE pain.

[Kadenz]

Imagine a legal splint boot until you galloped cross country in it and it got wet, and then it was illegally heavy so you got penalized. That would be coo coo, but it happens.

Huh. When did that happen? Or is it another example of taking a proposition, spinning it out past any logical end to scare people from making changes to the chains and other action devices so beloved by the saddleseat crowd?

[Kadenz]

I'm just baffled by the fear-mongering that basic regulations and enforcement thereof would create a police state wherein clean horse trainers and riders get ticketed, fined, or eliminated for non-infractions.

A steward who can't tell the difference between a clean, dry, legal chain and one caked with mud? Really? Come on now.

I've taught the dressage bit rules to a guy who doesn't even RIDE, and he does a great job of bit checking at our shows. This doesn't take genius-level IQ. Just a little bit of freakin' integrity.