Sohn: Our Tennessee walking horses still need help

This is a horse whose legs had been slathered with caustic
chemicals and wrapped tightly to cook the chemicals into its flesh and cause extreme pain — all to produce the "big lick." — This is a horse whose legs had been slathered with caustic chemicals and wrapped tightly to cook the chemicals into its flesh and cause extreme pain — all to produce the "big lick."

By Pam Sohn April 3, 2017 4 min read

In this May 18, 2012 photo, a walking horse is fitted with a “package,” raised shoes that raise the front legs of the horse, in Shelbyville, Tenn. Weighted shoes could be banned under a proposed bill. (AP Photo/The Tennessean, Larry McCormack) NO SALES

You may recall that in November there was news that Tennessee Walking Horses would finally be freed from the stacks and chains that transform their graceful natural gait into a painful lurch and make our beloved horses sore.

Their delivery from pain was promised by new U.S. Department of Agriculture rules to upgrade Horse Protection Act regulations. Those new rules would have banned devices that contribute to horse soring, the practice of deliberately injuring a horse’s legs and hooves to force the artificial “big lick,” according to the Humane Society of the United States – an organization that has fought for reform in the walking horse industry for more than a decade.

Well, forget that.

The nationwide campaign to end horse soring came close, but the Humane Society says a failure of Federal Register personnel to properly publish the new USDA rule before President Barack Obama’s term ended left the new rule vulnerable to a subsequent decision by the Trump administration to put a freeze all pending rules. The new rules went to limbo-land.

Then the USDA, with leadership in flux, withdrew the rules. Never mind that the rules had been supported by a bipartisan group of Congress members (though not ours).