By Pam Sohn

Staff Writer

Charlotte Stolz acknowledges that she was a novice about the horse show business when she bought her Tennessee walking horse, but she never expected to learn the horse had been so abused that he might have to be euthanized.

Soldier, who was sold to her wearing walking horse pads that hid his clipped hooves, had been pressure-shod, a type of soring that makes a horse step high in pain. The result, unless the horse goes lame, is an exaggerated gait called the "big lick."

But shortly after the sale, Soldier did go lame. After Ms. Stolz had a farrier remove the walking horse weighted pads and had a vet X-ray her horse's hooves, she knew why. His hooves had been trimmed to the quick ? the soft tender flesh beneath the hardened hoof edge - and his foot bone had been stressed so much it had become misaligned.

"They (vets) told me to just put him down," Ms. Stolz said. "He was in so much pain, he was pitiful."

Soldier is one of hundreds of horses officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture believe have been sored or abused as part of training in the walking horse business - a multimillion-dollar industry headquartered in Tennessee.

Soring is a banned training practice using chemical burns, cuts or pressure shoeing to exaggerate the breed's natural high-stepping gait.

USDA inspectors in August disqualified six of nine horses in this year's Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration because they believed they found evidence of soring. The disqualifications, coupled with Chattanoogan Mike Walden's offer to pay $10,000 each to the trainers of the remaining qualified horses if they did not show, ended the 68th annual show without a champion in late August. In a published apology the next day, Mr. Walden said his offer was misunderstood, but Celebration officials banned him from association functions and sponsorships for two years. This week a new walking horse show was announced to name a champion in late November.

"paying the price"



Ms. Stolz and her friends are slowly, but successfully, rehabilitating Soldier on a small farm near Chattanooga.

Her friends, Robert and Lucille Davis, also bought a Tennessee walking horse and later learned an unpleasant truth about the expensive bloodlined horse they hoped would help them become established in the horse show world.

Deuce, as they call him, has chemical burn scars on his legs that have disqualified him at the shows. Now the Davises know they likely never will recoup their investment. They can't show Deuce in the big lick, big money classes, and they can't sell him for what they paid for him.

"We're paying the price for the people who have done the soring," Ms. Davis said. "We're learning as we go. We wouldn't have bought him if we had known."

Ms. Davis and Ms. Stolz are especially concerned that USDA emphasis on soring may lead to more pressure shoeing.

Mack Motes, a board member of the Tennessee Walking Horse Trainers Association, said the walking horse industry "has come a long way" from where it was in 1975 shortly after Congress passed the Horse Protection Act to ban soring and other abuse of walking horses and other equine breeds.

He said 10 horses out of 2,992 were disqualified this year over the 11 days of the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration. At last year's event, 19 horses were disqualified, he said.

"I'm not saying that we're 100 percent in compliance," he said. "When you've got a program that can cut alleged violations down 50 percent ? if you can cut down murder 50 percent in Nashville or Chattanooga, everybody in law enforcement in Nashville or Chattanooga would say, ?Hey, boy, we've done good.'"

David Pruitt, president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Owners Association and current chairman of the National Horse Show Commission, also said the industry is doing better.

"As our inspection methods have improved, we've finally started to see a drop in the number of sored horses," Mr. Pruitt said.

He said that last year less than one half of 1 percent of violations were for sensitivity in the horses' legs or feet that inspectors thought indicated soring.

"To put it another way, over 99 percent of our horses are in compliance," Mr. Pruitt said last week at a U.S Department of Agriculture listening session with members of the horse industry.

Ms. Davis cited other statistics at the listening session. In 2005, 16 directors of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders and Exhibitors Association were suspended or cited for violation of various industry rules, and 22 of 25 top trainers received suspensions, she said.

"These are the same people," she said, who are involved in the industry-regulated judging and show inspection programs.

"I'm sorry, but this is like getting al-Qaida to come over and get on our security system," she said. "And when the USDA showed up at shows, there were 15 times more violations" than at shows inspected by the industry inspectors.



Soldier's journey

Saving Soldier already has been a yearlong battle.

Beneath the walking horse pads, the vet found major purple bruising, a sign that at some point Soldier also may have been "fixed," or sored with some object such as a half a golf ball, a bolted metal plate or a small block of wood wedged between his hoof and the pad for hours or days on end. Typically, the object is removed before a show or sale, but the soreness remains and forces the animal to put more weight on its hind legs and pick up its front legs higher and quicker.

Charles Hall, a certified journeyman farrier in Middle Tennessee, wrote an evaluation of Soldier.

"Soldier foundered and had rotation caused from pressure shoeing," his report states. "The term founder means separation of the sensitive laminae from the coffin bone, which would be about as painful as someone pulling your finger nail away from your finger and then telling you to support your weight on your fingers all the time."

Mr. Hall said the frogs of Soldier's feet, highly elastic wedge-shaped masses that act as shock absorbers and pumps for blood vessels there, were nonexistent. "Without the frog the foot cannot function properly," he wrote.

With time and special care, Soldier has improved, and Ms. Stolz is riding him again, but his show days are over.

Meanwhile, the walking horse "big lick" movement is spreading. Sunday marks the beginning of an annual Shelbyville, Tenn., show for a breed of horses known as spotted saddle horses, including a "big lick" class.

Todd Johnson owns and operates BJiT Ranch in Virginia where he raises and trains spotted saddle horses, a trail pleasure-gaited breed. Mr. Johnson said some trainers of spotted saddle horses are beginning to use Tennessee walking horse training methods.

He doesn't like the trend, and his Web page makes that clear.

"Absolutely no padded trainers" states a banner just above the sale photos of colts and fillies sired by Mr. Johnson's world champion trail pleasure horse, Ragin' Cajun.

The pads, hard, plastic hoof-shaped foot extensions between the horses' front feet and their iron horse shoes, are legal and add weight and height to the horses' hooves to alter their gait. Critics say the pads make it too easy to hide foot soring devices.

"The spotted saddle horse breed hasn't taken as much of a beating," Mr. Johnson said of the abuse in the walking horse world. "But one look by any educated eye would see that it is beginning to happen here (in this breed), too."

Why it happens is simple, Mr. Johnson said.

It is "for that $2 piece of blue satin" and the increased breeding and training fees that follow, he said.

But Mr. Johnson draws a line. He doesn't show in the "big lick" classes, and he sells his colts and fillies only to reputable trainers or families he knows, he said.

"Those colts and fillies (on the Web page) I brought into this world, and I have a responsibility for them. If that situation happened to my colts because I put money ahead of the horse's welfare, I couldn't live with myself. I'll quit breeding him (Ragin' Cajun) before that happens."

E-mail Pam Sohn at psohn@timesfreepress.com

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