Walking Horse Chief: Chains Make Us Look Bad, Have To Go

Tennessee Walking Horses are permanently outfitted with pads also known as stacks. Methods called “pressure shoeing” can also make it uncomfortable for a horse to put weight on its front hooves, resulting in a higher kick. Credit: HSUS

The head of the Tennessee Walking Horse breeders group has stuck his neck out this week. Even though his board of directors wouldn’t go along, he says he favors new regulations for the industry being considered by Congress that may end the use of chains.

They’re politely called “action devices” among walking horse trainers. The six-ounce chain bracelets are worn on the horse’s front legs.

Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders and Exhibitors Association president Tracy Boyd says the chains basically remind a horse to kick as it struts around the show ring. He contends they don’t hurt.

“It’s to the point now, it’s more about image,” he says, suggesting something like a leather band could be used instead. “I just don’t know that the chain is something we can continue to sell.”

Hear Boyd explain in a phone interview with WPLN:

While the lightweight chains have been shown to cause very little pain in an Auburn University study, they are a visual representation of the industry’s biggest problem – soring. The outlawed practice involves applying irritating chemicals to a horse’s ankles to make them kick higher. For those animals, the chains are intended to make the pain worse.

“We have clearly lost the public”

Boyd released a manifesto of sorts this week on the TWHBEA website. He says he favors new regulations working their way through Congress known as the Whitfield Amendment. At this point, it would effectively end the use of all “action devices,” including chains as wells as the padded shoes the walking horses have strapped to their front hooves.

“I made perhaps the toughest decision of my life,” Boyd writes. “A decision that carries potential ramifications for many of my friends.”

“We have no more friends outside our industry,” he says, adding that the association has “clearly lost the public.”

Veterinarians have come out against any use of any action device.

Keith Dane shows off so-called “logging chains” that are banned in the show ring but are often used in the training of a Tennessee Walking Horse. Credit: HSUS

The coveted high stepping known as the “Big Lick” may be impossible to achieve without the pads and chains, says Keith Dane, director of equine protection at the Humane Society of the United States.

“You have to ask yourself,” he says. “If it were possible to get a horse to walk with this gate without soring, why would so many people be doing it?”

Dane, who is also a breeder association board member representing the state of Maryland, says there’s no way to completely stop soring unless action devices are banned. Some trainers have been known to put ball bearings or pieces of a golf ball between a horses hoof and the pads, which are not removed before a show.

Each soring method is meant to make it uncomfortable for a horse to put weight on its front legs, almost like a person having a rock in his shoe.

“Some people have been so addicted to this look that they aren’t willing to accept anything less,” Dane says.

The TWHBEA has been hemoraging members in recent years, from a high of 20,000 in 1997 to 8,300 dues-paying supporters today.

“The brutal emails I have received tell me why,” Boyd writes. “It is our reputation. It is soring. It is our image.”

What do you think? Is soring just an image problem? Leave a comment.