Justice and Paul Blackburn

Here is how The Humane Society of the United States answers the question of why soring persists even though the Horse Protection Act outlawed it. "From the beginning, underfunding and political pressure from industry insiders have plagued USDA's enforcement of the HPA. Lack of adequate funding prevents the USDA from sending agency officials to every Tennessee and Racking Horse show. As a result, they have instituted a system that allows horse industry organizations (HIOs) to train and license their own inspectors, known as Designated Qualified Persons (DPQs), to examine horses at shows for signs of soring. With the exception of a few HIOs who are committed to ending soring, most of the HIOs are made up of industry insiders who have a clear stake in preserving the status quo" www.humanesociety.org/issues/tenn_walking_horses/facts/what_is_soring.html.To make matters worse, when perpetrators get caught, they seldom receive the punishment they deserve. Here is a case in point. Paul Blackburn, Jeffery Bradford, and Christen Altman were employed by Barney Davis at his Hidden Creek Farms in Lewisburg, Tennessee, where they sored horses and practiced other illegalities. In a seven-month investigation, a smart agent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture collected enough evidence to indict and convict them all. At the sentencing of Blackburn, he said, "I know what I done was wrong. I am very sorry for it." His attorney argued that Blackburn shouldn't go to jail because he is the father of six children and the family would suffer. The judge listened. Blackburn's final punishments were these: one year of probation, a $1000 penalty, and an assignment to write an article about soring to be published in the local paper. After the sentencing, Blackburn, as reported in a number of newspapers, said "he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."  In the wrong place to get caught? This doesn't square with his courtroom apology. Notably, both the judge and one of the two U.S. attorneys said they didn't know about horse soring before taking over the case. The judge even said that more people should know about soring. I hope that the February sentencing of the others will be as stringent as the law allows, seeing that video evidence shows a plate and bolt being inserted in a horse's foot.
And the future of justice for sorers looks dim. Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney, said that "the case, along with the government's 2011 case in Middle Tennessee against Chris Zahnd, 45, of Trinity, Alabama, who was sentenced in November to two years of probation, are the first criminal prosecutions of Horse Protection Act violations nationally in about 20 years."
To tell the truth, I don't expect the other three defendants to be sentenced severely enough for what they did. The Tennessee cruelty to animals laws are too weak. And some people claim that since horses are still classified in Tennessee law as "livestock" rather than "animal," the latter defined as "a domesticated living creature or a wild creature previously captured," those who torture gaited horses in the state will never be punished even adequately for what they did.
Special thanks to Bill Poovey, whose article I depended on for this posting, and which was reprinted in a number of newspapers.
Next posting: Friends of Sound Horses

DQPs: Enforcing the Horse Protection Act

The Horse Protection Act has to be enforced. To that end, APHIS
(Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) set up the Designated Qualified Person (DQP) system. These people are U.S. department of Agriculture (USDA) accredited experts: veterinarians with horse experience, farriers, trainers, or others who have the necessary knowledge to inspect horses and make sure that sored horses cannot be in the ring. Managers of a sale or show hire the DQPs. They are called upon to physically inspect every Tennessee walking horse or racking horse before they can be sold or exhibited or shown. APHIS inspectors are organized into teams to attend shows, unannounced, and inspect horses. What if they find a horse that has been sored? They report this violation of the law to management; management then disqualifies the sored horses before any prizes are awarded in a show or before the poor horses are viewed by potential buyers. What do these teams look for? Here are the three parts of the examination as summarized in the APHIS Factsheet on the Horse Protection Act:

• "An evaluation of the horse's movement
• Observation of the horse's appearance during inspection
• Physical examination the horse's forelegs from the knee to the hoof"

The inspectors look closely at the "area of the coronet band, the anterior pastern areas, the 'pocket' of the posterior pastern area, and the bulb of the heel." These places are where the horse is apt to be sored. Horribly, there may be present "abnormal tissue damage, swelling, pain, abrasions, or oozing of blood or serum." Inspectors will evaluate the horse's shoeing, and search out devices that are heavy or used wrong. As a horse is worked, heavy devices continally banging on the horse's pastern can cause soring. Because sorers have become more inventive over the years, inspectors use sophisticated technology with which to test: gas chromatography/mass spectrometry which can discover the composition of chemicals applied to the legs, and thermography, which can reveal abnormalities by measuring the temperature of the horse's legs. When sorers are identified, those who defy the Horse Protection Act, civil or criminal charges are preferred against the violator. If these men or women are convicted, they can go to prison for up to two years and in addition, receive penalties of up to $5000. Disqualification for one or more years is also possible and additional penalties of up to $2200 or more. Persons who have been disqualified cannot participate in any way in horse shows. They are allowed to attend them, though. Next time, what went wrong with this system?

Horse Protection Act

My purpose in this group of blogs on soring is to inform all horse lovers about soring, for many people don't know what it is, and why this abusive practice is still going on. We'll end the blogs by talking about FOSH or Friends of Sound Horses. The big question about the horrendous practice of soring is this: if there is a federal law against it, why are horses still suffering through soring at the hands of their owners or trainers? In future posts, I'll do my best to answer that question. But first we have to talk about the Horse Protection Act (HPA.) The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), enforces the HPA. Lots of acronyms here, hope you can translate them as we go along. (Before we go further, I am indebted to an excellent factsheet online put together by APHIS and dated 2009.)
If you're reading these blogs, you'll remember that so many people protested soring that the HPA was passed in 1970 and amended in 1976. In essence, the law states that any horses that are found to be sored are prohibited from being part of "shows, sales, exhibitions, or auctions." In addition, drivers are prohibited from "transporting sored horses to or from any of these events." APHIS wants to cooperate with the horse industry to make sure that soring is stopped and that "only sound and healthy horses participate in shows." The HPA aims to make sure owners and trainers who train their horses by conventional means, that is, train responsibly, are not faced with "unfair competition" by those who sore. The HPA covers all breeds but establishes that the high-stepping breeds are often sored. The law places the responsibility for keeping sore horses from being shown, sold or exhibited with the following people: managers of events, owners, trainers, riders and sellers. The managers bear the major legal responsibility to see that any horse event they are running, from shows through auctions, do not contain sored horses. Pretty clear, so far? Next time, the DQPs. What or who are those? Stay tuned.

History of Soring

The Tennessee Walking Horse is an American breed of 15-16 hands. Said to have been developed by plantation owners to provide a comfortable ride for those who had to spend hours in the saddle every day, the horse has a reputation for docility. I know this is true for I have ridden one on a trail ride, and could not believe the smoothness of the horse's performance. "Gaited" horses have an inherited ability to perform five gaits: walk, trot, canter, stepping pace, and the rack. The Tennessee horse is known for its gait which is a half run and half trot movement. Other gaited horses are the American Saddlebred, Missouri Fox Trotter, Rocky Mountain Horse, Standardbred, Icelandic Horse, Paso Fino and Peruvian Paso. Before the 1950's, owners and trainers bred the gentle Walking Horse by regular means and liked to show off their beautiful animals, competing for and winning prizes. But then something awful happened. An unscrupulous group of owners and trainers who believed the training was too slow, decided to try a technique they'd heard about: soring. They'd seen Midnight Sun, a great Walking Horse who could lift his legs very high, the so-called "big lick," and they wanted their horses to do this too. Soring would have three "advantages:" more high-stepping horses which thrilled show-goers; more prizes in shows, and more prestige for the owners and trainers who used this training method of torturing their horses. Sure enough, the tortured horses had an edge over their conventionally-trained buddies. The 1960's saw widespread use of soring. When there was a huge protest from those who esteemed horses, the Horse Protection Act was passed in 1970 and amended in 1976. But some owners and trainers were still defiant, continuing to sore. And to this day, horses are still suffering. In future posts, I'll talk about what the law entails and why soring has not been eliminated.

Soring Horses, The Horse Protection Act, and FOSH

This is the first post of several in coming days that deal with soring horses, The Horse Protection Act, and Friends of Sound Horses (FOSH). Many people still don't know what soring is. Soring is the deliberate mutilation of a horse to make its gait so unusual that the rider will win prizes in the show ring and prestige from fellow owners and trainers. The methods used to achieve the piteous, grotesque gait in the picture above are blistering the horse's forelegs through the use of chemicals, either applied or injected; cruel trimming of the horse's hooves; and forcing the horse to endure pressure-shoeing: all of this to achieve the unnatural gait you see above. That gait is the result of the poor horse lifting his legs high to avoid any more pain.
Next time, a brief history of how this practice came about.