On Eraser Heads and Pencil Pushers

Breaking News: A judge has ruled that the USDA must pay $267,167.90 to the plaintiffs in the recent mandatory penalties lawsuit which was decided against the USDA by a federal appeals court. This is less than the amount which was requested by the plaintiffs but is a significant event.  ( See an earlier blog on this siteabout the Equal Access to Justice law which explains how this came to be.)  Further, Mike McGartland, on February 29, 2016, filed a suit in Fort Worth, Texas, that corresponds to the PSHA letter contained in this blog. 

“Crime to many is not a crime but simply a way of life. If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don’t apply to you. ”

— Dick Francis

Blessed with an abundance of cedar trees, Shelbyville, Tennessee, was once known as the pencil capital of the USA. Back in the day, every school kid in America had a daily working relationship with the number two pencil.  Classroom warriors were on friendly terms with both the pointy end and the harder working end, the eraser.  Truth is told; depending on the student, the eraser on the #2 often wore out long before the soft leaded pencil was sharpened down into a nub.

Students may not have known the origin of these pencils, but many of them came from middle Tennessee, from a town also known as the show ring capital of the Tennessee Walking Horse.  Shelbyville was so proud of the two drivers of economic important to the town and Bedford County that it proudly emblazoned the big lick walking horse on all its official vehicles and in the town’s official logo.  They might have done better to feature the number two pencils.

These days, some of  those propping up what is left of  the walking horse business, are starting to resemble  the people that Weird Al Yankovic described as pencil-neck geeks in one of his parody songs.  They have gone back to early school days and decided that the old time eraser is their best weapon in the ongoing PR battle surrounding the sore horse. 

The Celebration, headquartered in Shelbyville, is the owner of the SHOW HIO that oversees the majority of inspections in walking horse show rings.  Until TWHBEA’s coyly named Project Pegasus ( the image of a horse trying to fly wearing a performance package continues to amuse and amaze)  can help get the still earthbound Walking Horse Equestrian Federation HIO, honchoed by long time supporter of the big lick horse Tom Blankenship, using the discredited Veterinary Advisory Committee that debuted at the Celebration several years ago as its launch pad, off the ground.   Mr. Blankenship told the local paper in a recent interview that although the Federation is at present owned by the VAC, in the future that ownership will be transferred to some other group yet to be identified.  For now, however, SHOW remains the biggest name in inspection show biz and thus, erasing the past appropriately begins with them.

After what the self-proclaimed  industry has rightly viewed as   a victory in the court of appeals over the USDA and its mandatory penalty regulation, intended by the USDA to curb the worst of the abuses in privately run inspection schemes, by ensuring that all discovered violations of the Horse Protection Act would at least bring about some level of equal treatment from HIO to HIO when penalties were adjudged, SHOW has now  determined  that the best way to deal with violation penalties is to make them go away altogether.

In 2016 there will be no penalties for violations found by SHOW DQPs at horse shows; instead, there will be the inconvenience of being sent back to the trailer, but have no fear, you’ll be welcome to come back to show your horse and try your luck in both inspection and in the ring the next Friday evening. As there are no penalties, there is no bothersome cumulative effect and no worrisome carry over of suspension periods from one year to the next. There are also no time consuming   hearings and  appeals of suspensions requiring a board made up of local citizens  (who didn’t really know much about what they were listening to) dispensing  what  the old-timers used to call “justice in the basement” .

SHOW’s decision has two benefits for the industry: trainers won’t be sitting out horse shows, which makes owners much happier, and more importantly, those pesky record keepers who continue to use the USDA published violation lists submitted by HIOs to inform the public  won’t have any data from which to draw.  

Advocates working  to expose  just how much evidence of soring   and scarring still exists in the big lick world and how much of it can be directly traced to name trainers, their employees,  and their employers, as well as industry leaders,  have used the databases to great effect. While the USDA’s online    system to    find this information is cumbersome, organizations like FOSH have built a user -friendly system to trace decades of issued ticketsas recorded from USDA records   for both individuals and horses.  Without so much as a smudge on the paper, however, all signs of current  violations will now be erased away through the HIO system.  (Who said those kids in classrooms who grew up to be the late middle -aged leaders of the walking horse business wouldn’t  remember anything of importance  from grammar school?)

Why should sound horse advocates care about the actions of the  eraser heads? 

In 2015when the Mississippi Charity Horse show found that the principal recipient of its annual donation no longer was interested in accepting the horse show’s check, one of the driving reasons for that decision was the evidence provided to the hospital board of violations consolidated in a data base maintained from public records provided   by the Friends of Sound Horses (FOSH).  The violation history covered not only trainers and exhibitors but also the records of judges and organizers; it was hard to argue with the list because the data came directly from the industry.  That factual information helped to change attitudes, as did the fact that the individuals involved had   accepted the suspensions and paid the fines, indicating an acceptance of responsibility for the cited violations.

In every op-ed, letter to the editor, or response in comment to stories about the ongoing controversy surrounding the shoeing, training and showing practices aimed at big lick horses, this violation history, showing a pattern of  decades of abuse as well as a proliferation of  current violations, has been used to   demonstrate     that soring has not gone away as the spinners from the show walking horse apologists like to claim.  

Photos of scarred horses, clearly in violation, that have been shown almost until the date of rescue, further  disprove the assertions   that photos of these horses pasterns come from pictures taken  in the 70s, and 80s, a claim recently made in Florida by a representative of the Trainers association whose own history, as well as the documented history of his principal employers, past and present, can charitably only   be described as checkered.

The violation history of the Riders’ Cup participants as well as the history of the judges for major horse shows raises danger flags for everyone who takes the time to look at the data.  You don’t have to know much about horses to know that no other breed or show organization flaunts this sort of documented tail- wagging- the- dog contempt for the law as the performance horse crowd has always done.    Instead of changing its practices, however, what has to be done   is to erase the trail.  Covering their tracks is no longer good enough; the tracks must   cease to exist.

Respectable bodies like the USEF, the organization which regulates equestrian sport in the United States, make a point of listing in detail the name, offense, fine and suspension period of riders and trainers found in violation of the operating rules.  By contrast, the walking horse fancy has long refused to run inspection violations in any of its trade publications or the official magazine of the breed registry, The Voice.  It has been left to advocates for change   to put that information into the public dialogue, tangentially, protecting  unknowing owners from placing their walking horses in training with individuals who have a history of violating the HPA.  

With a diligent rubbing away of the facts and a flick of the eraser crumbs off the paper, that history now will conveniently begin to disappear, but not in time, thankfully, for it not to be available to be put   on display in Panama City Beach, Florida.  There, a citizens’ protest against the upcoming Gulf Coast Charity horse show, scheduled for April, has brought this information not only to the City Council but also to the Tourism Development Board.  The story has received considerable local   media attention and the comments from Floridians haven’t been kind after   learning of  horse abuse masquerading as horse showing.

The Tourism Board was   prepared to donate $25,000 to the show without having a full idea of who the organizers are in relation to the horse business, what their history in regard to the HPA was and is, and without having looked at their tax records, a   record   that will always remain available to the public , to see that money from the shows has in recent years gone primarily to the walking horse racket’s own favorite charity—itself.

TWHBEA, the WHTA, the improvement of the horse show facilities to hold the show, and The Celebration itself have all received more money from recent events than any charitable group operating in Florida.  The show horse community continues to do well under the guise of doing good; the horses continue to be bit players and long suffering actors on the larger stage.   

Access to data matters in this ongoing fight against the sore horse and that’s why the pencil pushers are  intent on making  it disappear.

This brings us to the latest lawsuit contemplated by the Performance Show Horse Association, (PSHA) now raising funds to do some erasing on the federal level, too.  This letter was recently sent to its supporters:

To give credit where credit is due, PSHA has a great idea, here, and there is little   doubt that they will find the funding to proceed.  Having won against mandatory penalties, they have gone back to the McGartland dream team with a constitutional challenge    in order to put the rock permanently in place, which   when turned over has   been allowing the sun to shine in on their activities.

  The fact is that USDA has never been able to prosecute all of the cases for which it takes HPA violation information at the small percentage of horse shows that it attends; that’s why HIOs were created,  to help with enforcement activities at a lower level through     a self-policing    partnership. As we know, that hasn’t worked in the past and won’t be working   in   the penalty and suspension -free future.

Unfortunately, too many of the potential federal   cases are simply written off by the USDA after floating around for years in limbo.  Further, cases that are prosecuted can take years to wind their way through the administrative law proceedings and while those cases drag on, the defendants continue to show horses. 

Violations that produce USDA    7060s are never taken to full court cases and are meaningless in their effect, except for the   public existence   of the forms   that can be referenced by advocates.  The letters of warning themselves are sent to offenders who turn them over and use them as scrap paper, arguing that they prove nothing and mean less    because they have    never been taken to court   over them. 

 If the proposed PSHA challenge were to be successful in the courts, all of the HIO data, all of the warning letters, all of the information that has been     useful to advocates and to investigative reporters in helping to inform as well as to frame the public debate on this issue could simply disappear from public view.  It would be gone in the same way that the number two pencil has been erased by technology. 

All PSHA needs is the money to get going. $125,000 was recently made available through donors to TWHBEA to fund Project Pegasus, the HIO that will take the place of SHOW once all the pieces are put into place by the same old men that have run the industry for years.  Money will surely   also  be made available for PSHA to attempt to get rid of the mechanisms that have created a public record that has begun to plague them   now that the world knows where to go to find the evidence of the continuing practice of   soring.

Since the majority of the people leading that charge are of a certain age, the words to an old country song, “ Make the World Go Away”, should be lyrics that they both    remember and   embrace. 

Full disclosure is not their friend; erasing their mistakes in order to change their answers, just as they once did on their homework or while   copying answers from the kid next to them, is now the business of the day; and, as to the opinion of the rest of the world about their activities…. Well, frankly, they just don’t give a damn.

This is why the veteran trainer    Billy Gray, still serving a federal suspension for violation for the HPA    that will last until 2018 ( and this  wasn’t his first time at the federal suspension rodeo),    was recently awarded the Walking Horse Trainers’ Association’ life- time achievement award. Mr. Gray    was the WHTA’s first honored recipient,  with the glow of the   award intended to erase the dismal   record   of  his past. 

The eraser is a wonderful tool when employed by those who know how to use it to full benefit.  As soon as the   records    disappear, pesky citizens and their protests , troublesome humane groups, and irritating organizations like the AHC and the AAEP and AVMA  and their meddling  will also  disappear once they are  deprived of the information   that they need to fight the battle against the sore horse,  or so this clique hopes.  Let’s all    hope that they’re wrong. It's going to be another court case that decides.

Facts Not Fiction Carry the Day in Columbia Court Room

In the end, after listening to hours of testimony in the case of the State of Tennessee versus Jamie Brandon Lawrence, who had been  indicted by a grand jury for turning his truck towards a protester at the Columbia horse show held on May 30th, 2015, it took the jury an   hour to separate the factual testimony from the fictional testimony and return a verdict of guilty to a lesser charge than aggravated assault, a felony,   to a misdemeanor charge of assault.  Mr. Lawrence had   pled not guilty.

Two jurors did, however,  in returning a verdict, comment that they believed that there were extenuating circumstances in the case, apparently buying into    at least part of the defense attorney’s contention  that statements made by the protesters may have provoked Mr. Lawrence and his actions were not premeditated.

Lawrence’s attorney, Mr. Colley, who appeared to be back- benched by“Sister” Milligan, a big lick exhibitor from Florida who is also an attorney and was involved in the early days of the Larry Wheelon case, played the “not from here” card in his final statement.  He was assisted through   the day  by multiple notes passed back and forth by Milligan and by conferences in and out of the courtroom during recesses. He   portrayed Mr. Lawrence as the  victim rather than the aggressor. 

He told the jury, “ This is a case of people (the protesters) who wanted to come here and cause problems, getting a chance to do something that would help their case (calling attention to the issue of soring).  That’s why they came to Maury County; this was going to be their cause celebre because getting a conviction of a horse trainer was going to help them. … “

 Saying he didn’t know what passed for peaceful protest in Hillsboro, Missouri, the hometown of Ms. Bippen, or of Mulberry, Tennessee, the location of prosecution witness and fellow protester Tara Taylor, Colley tried to create the impression that the protesters were unruly and offensive throughout the entire protest, something which was not supported by the evidence or by testimony from local law enforcement.

“ They were screaming things like  ‘rednecks’ and ‘we see how you are’…. Don’t fall for it, “ Colley told the jury, adding, “ If Ms. Bippen was afraid, which we question, it wasn’t a reasonable fear.”

Witnesses for the prosecution included two protesters and two members of local law enforcement, a Lieutenant Andy Jackson from the sheriff’s department who actually ran after Lawrence’s truck and trailer after it   swerved towards Ms. Bippen and brought the rig to a halt, and a member of the Columbia City Police, Sgt. Orlando Cox, who had been sitting behind the protesters in his capacity of keeping the peace.   

When the incident occurred Cox testified that he jumped out of his patrol car and headed in the direction of Lawrence’s rig, following close behind Lt. Jackson, who also ran towards the truck and beat on the rig until Lawrence stopped.  Testimony from the law enforcement personnel was key to the prosecution's case.

Lt. Jackson testified that he asked Lawrence directly, “ What in the world did you do that for?”, immediately after Lawrence swerved his truck towards Bippen and that Lawrence responded to him that “ I shouldn’t have. “

Lt. Jackson further testified that he came back, later, to Ms. Bippen, requested her information,  and told her that it was necessary because she might have to return to testify before a grand jury in this case.

Mr. Colley was insistent that Jackson had not followed correct police procedure by handcuffing and arresting Mr. Lawrence after the incident, if, he in fact believed, that Mr. Lawrence had done something wrong.  

During cross examination, Lt. Jackson said he allowed Mr. Lawrence to continue to the horse show staging area after this initial contact, testified that he told Lawrence he would come and find him, which he did within 6 to 8 minutes or so of having him move out of the area. By that time Lawrence had changed his story, as described by attorney Colley,  saying that he was only following Jackson’s directions, as Jackson had been directing horse show traffic just before the incident took place, and that he never intended to hit anyone. 

On cross examination,Jackson   told Mr. Colley that he did not remember having to get protesters either to disperse or to back off and, although he did remember hearing some of them scream after the incident “ that was attempted murder”, he declined to confirm Mr. Colley’s contention that the protesters had been using inappropriate language earlier.  He did say that a few of them had been told to calm down and to get off the road.  Lt. Jackson also testified that he asked Lawrence for a written statement which he never received.

Sgt. Cox described the scene as  “protesters standing on the grassy area, about four feet away from the road, holding up signs and chanting slogans as traffic was coming in. “

Cox  said that until the moment of the incident,  “there was nothing to cause alarm in the interaction between the protesters and the horse people, but that at one point there was a verbal altercation between a protester (Tara Taylor) and Mr. Lawrence, who either slowed down or stopped in the middle of the road.”

Cox thus corroborated Ms. Taylor’s earlier testimony that Mr. Lawrence and she had exchanged words, which she described in her testimony as ‘what right she had to be there and how did she know what he was doing in his horse barn’.  She described Lawrence during this exchange as angry and getting angrier, grabbing the steering wheel with both hands and then gunning his engine before cutting his wheels sharply in Ms. Bippen’s direction.

  In his opening statement   Mr. Colley insisted that this exchange never happened.  “ The idea that Ms. Taylor had a conversation with Mr. Lawrence will be proved to be either false, either exaggerated or falsely made up,  “ he told the jury.

Mr. Colley during cross examination used his I-phone timer feature to show that this exchange would have taken about 7.5 seconds to complete, but his theatrics did not change Ms. Taylor’s testimony.

Meanwhile, on the bench behind the counsel’s table, Sister Milligan stretched over next to a woman supportive of Mr. Lawrence who was sitting next to her on the bench and said, sotto voce, regarding the I-phone timing demonstration, “ That (challenging the time the exchange took) was my idea!”

Sgt. Cox also corroborated through his own testimony both   Ms. Bippen’s and Ms. Taylor’ s earlier description of the incident regarding the driver swerving his rig in the direction of Ms. Bippen. 

Cox said, “ He (Lawrence) made a swift move to the left, a quick jerking of the wheel and I thought, that’s awful close, and jumped out of my patrol car. “

Asked by the prosecutor if Mr. Lawrence made any comment, Sgt. Cox responded that he heard the driver say, “ You all don’t know the problems these people cause us. “   He also indicated that he hadn’t heard   Mr. Lawrence say, “ He shouldn’t have done it.”, when Lt. Jackson first questioned him, but that he might have gotten that information from someone else. 

The defense called five witnesses, a retired basketball coach who had been taking gate money for the horse show and was a member of the Maury County Horseman’s Association; David Sisk, the show chairman and a local farmer; another member of the Sheriff’s Department, Officer Diehl, Connie Lawrence, Jamie Lawrence’s wife; and, Mr. Lawrence himself.

Coach Brewer testified that he heard a “commotion” and walked down to see what was going on, as there weren’t that many cars coming through the gate and that he was “just being nosy”.  Although he testified that he heard Mr. Lawrence tell Lt. Jackson that “ I wasn’t trying to run over anyone, I was just doing what you told me to do. “, he also said that Officer Diehl was present during this conversation, which was later proven to be incorrect. 

According to Officer Diehl, he never left his post and was not able to identify Mr. Lawrence, although he did see the wheels on the rig turn in the direction of a lady,  but,  when he saw that city officers as well as Lt. Jackson had already responded,  he stayed directing traffic. He confirmed he did not make an arrest in the case nor did he hear any conversation. 

 The conversation that Mr. Brewer might have heard was clearly not the same conversation as the one referenced earlier by both Sheriff Jackson and Officer Cox. 

Brewer further  testified he called David Sisk, the show chairman,  to let him know that there was a problem.

When Sisk came to the stand, he testified that when he arrived he walked into a conversation with Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Jackson and that there was no one else who participated. He testified that he heard Mr. Lawrence say, “ I didn’t try to hit anybody.”  , and that Lt. Jackson responded to Mr. Lawrence’s question of ‘what do I need to do’,  by saying “nothing.”  Sisk testified that Lt. Jackson then said, “ I know you didn’t do anything. I’ll be back later to write a report. “

Sisk added that Lt. Jackson later told him when the two were in a car together, that, “probably nothing was going to happen (to Lawrence) because he really didn’t do anything.  I just have to write a report.”

Mr. Colley’s contention throughout these witnesses’ testimony was that if a crime had been committed, Lt. Jackson should have handcuffed and arrested Mr. Lawrence on the spot but that didn’t happen, because, Mr. Colley said, nothing had happened.

Earlier Lt. Jackson took exception to this characterization, telling Mr. Colley that according to police protocol he was not required to make an immediate arrest; that an investigation followed by a grand jury proceeding was also an appropriate way to handle a situation like this one.

Mr. Colley called Connie Lawrence to the stand, determined that she drove a school bus in Alabama, that she and her entire family was involved in showing horses and that they had been to the horse show in Columbia many times.  She was asked what she was doing on May 30th and she responded she was riding in the truck driven by her husband, Jamie Lawrence, along with her father-in-law and her young daughter.  

“ I had brought a book to read, “ she testified, saying that she didn’t really notice the protesters, didn’t hear her husband yell at anyone, didn’t remember him stopping, didn’t remember the engine revving, although she did say, “ I heard someone hollering, I glanced up, I didn’t see anything happen, although I did feel the truck slow down, I didn’t know anything was going on. I went back to reading my book. ”

Asked by the prosecutor what book she was reading (that so clearly captivated all of her attention),   Ms. Lawrence said she was reading Outlander and added  that it was a good book and a movie had been made out of it. 

The prosecutor would later show that Mr. Lawrence’s father, who was sitting directly behind Mrs. Lawrence, had rolled down the window twice on his side of truck and had engaged with protesters, none of which,  if Mrs. Lawrence’s testimony is to be believed, she heard, she was so engrossed in her reading material.

Mr. Lawrence was then called to the stand and described his occupation as training walking and racking horses and driving a school bus in Alabama.  He said he had been coming to the Columbia show for 7-8 or 8-10 years, “ A long time, “ he added. 

Under oath, Mr. Lawrence then set forth his version of events, saying that all the other years he had come to Columbia the traffic pattern was different, that it always went straight, but that this year Lt. Jackson was giving directions and “ I follered suit.”  He told the jury that this year he was driving his small rig, that he had a tractor trailer but this was a truck with a trailer behind.

 He said, “ I just happened to see Ms. Bippen and I had to over correct. I seen her to my left. I never made eye contact with her because she had a sign in front of her face.”

Earlier in Ms. Bippen’s testimony, Mr. Colley had tried to prove that Ms. Bippen could not, as she testified, have seen Mr. Lawrence look directly at her as he cut his wheels, because her sign obscured her face;  however,  a still photo from the incident showed her face to be visible at the bottom of the sign, which was held at an angle to her body. 

Mr. Lawrence continued his testimony saying he never said to Lt. Jackson, “ I shouldn’t have done that” nor did he ever make the statement Sgt. Cox reported, “ That you all have no idea the problems these people cause us. “  His  assertions were in direct contradiction to the sworn testimony of both law enforcement officers.

Mr. Lawrence, under sworn oath, said, “ I did not do that. I have never thought about running over a person.  He testified that when Lt. Jackson did catch up with him “ about 30 minutes” after the incident, that he gave the officer his license and “ I felt like it ended good. I felt he would have to do a report because they (the protesters) were putting so much pressure on them (law enforcement).”

Mr. Lawrence also alluded to the fact that Clant Seay, the protestorganizer who was not called to testify, was causing a “ big ruckus”, saying he didn’t know what his credentials were but it was “his organization that was against us”. 

“ He was the one who shot the video, “ Lawrence added, referring to the video that was used repeatedly throughout the trial by both prosecution and defense. 

Mr. Lawrence was asked if anyone in his truck had been engaged with the protesters and he testified that his dad had but that he “didn’t think he was yelling”.   Lawrence’s father was in the court house but was not called to testify.

As Mr. Lawrence testified, pointing frequently at the map of the roads surrounding the park, he seemed to grow more forceful in his denials and assertions. He capped off his performance by saying that he didn’t believe that Teresa Bippen ever moved when the truck was coming her way. ( It's possible that Mr. Lawrence didn't comprehend the irony of the slogan Big Lick, Big Lie, chanted by protesters in May as it appeared to apply to his own testimony.)

“ No sir, “ she didn’t, “ he told Colley,  adding that the video proved that the sign was up over her face.   

The prosecutor then returned to the video showing that the sign was clearly moving as the truck swerved left, indicating that Ms. Bippen must have been moving with it.

In closing arguments, the prosecutor conceded that Mr. Lawrence might not have intended to hit Ms. Bippen, that his intention might merely to have been to frighten her and then take evasive action; but, whether he came a foot away from her or six feet away from her how close did a substantial sized truck have to come to scare this “little lady”, he asked rhetorically, referring to Ms. Bippen’s very slight stature.   

He then advised the jury that they would have to ignore what was going on in the park, and ignore  that there was a group of people there who planned to come down and peacefully protest. He said  that the issue was whether or not Ms. Bippen had reason to fear for her life or for injury and whether or not Mr. Lawrence had cut his wheels in her direction, not whether he had left the road, or made tracks in the mud, or made it to the grass.

Mr. Colley then followed with his summation, choosing to attack the protest itself as being the cause of the incident.

“ They got together at O’Charley’s,” he said, referring to the organization meeting that Ms. Taylor had described in her testimony outlining  the rules for the protest and the requirements for staying within the legal definition of 1st amendment protest.

 “ Then they came out to the park and they give everyone who comes there a hard time. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for Mr. Lawrence, for the first time in years, the sheriff was going to reroute traffic, supposedly for security reasons…. This gave Seay, Ms. Taylor and Ms. Bippen the opportunity to shriek, holler, and call names and to use what happened here to bring attention to their cause. That’s the motivation here… The most important thing is what happened after the cops ran over to the truck and that’s nothing.  They didn’t even ask Mr. Lawrence for ID, insurance, his tag # and they certainly didn’t arrest him. …They were aware that nothing was going to come out of this.”

“ The reasonable people,” Mr. Colley continued, “ were the police who did absolutely nothing about this so-called felony that they witnessed. “

Colley then continued to excoriate both Bippen and Taylor  essentially calling their testimony falsehoods intended to promote a cause against the big lick horse.

It was left to Mr. Howell   to wrap up the case, which he did brilliantly, saying with some sarcasm, that it was very clear to him that all of the law enforcement officers and Ms. Bippen and Ms. Taylor must have been involved in a conspiracy to catch someone up.  “ They must have decided that when the protesters began to holler that law enforcement would run out and catch someone, “ he said.

 Although Mr. Howell   did not directly address the clear contradictions between the sworn testimony of Mr. Lawrence and his wife with the sworn testimony of law enforcement officers as well as the two protesters, one of whom testified that she did “fear for her life” and jumped out of the way when she saw the truck come towards her, Mr. Howell   made it clear that he believed that the case that an assault had taken place was   made beyond a reasonable doubt   and that Ms. Bippen was clearly a victim. 

The jury must have believed it, too, and returned a guilty verdict. 

  Sentencing will take place in March. As Mr. Lawrence has no previous criminal record, it is possible that he will receive judicial diversion and that his record could be expunged after a year.

Why Don’t They Say What They Really Mean?

“Names are not always what they seem.”

— Mark Twain

For many years, TWHBEA, the breed registry in the United States for the Tennessee Walking Horse, has had an odd relationship with its members.  For those who support the goings -on that have made the big lick horse the public face of the breed-- the TWHBEA is a wonderful place: welcoming, rewarding, encouraging; for the rest, not so much.

Back in the days when the organization had money, it financially supported actions that did not reflect the interests of all its membership. They had a political action committee that helped to fund campaigns, including ranking in the top tier of Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) campaign contributors.  They took   dues and fees even as they   figured out how to keep the voices of discontent tamped down.  These machinations have, over the years, taken a toll on membership, registrations, transfers, breeding numbers, and ultimately on the bottom line but TWHBEA continues to play the game, blaming the recession for the downturn in its fortunes rather than blaming the animal abuse that is part of the show business beloved by many of its donor/members.

Those who quit, after trying to make a difference within the organizational structure, did so when they finally saw the light. They   took their money and their horses and went home, sometimes starting competing organizations, including show circuits. Unfortunately, as TWHBEA still controls the legal identity of the breed, the association has managed to keep on its roles some members who might have preferred, as so many others have done, to   vote with their feet.

     These folks continue to stick   around, either because they are breeders and need the blessings of the registry on their stock or because they continue to believe that the voices of conscience will eventually be heard even in Lewisburg, Tennessee.  They want to believe that change will come; that the performance horse will finally be recognized as the anachronism that it is; that the TWHBEA will get into the business of protecting the breed rather than promoting at the expense of the totality the gyrations of the big lick horse.  God bless those people for their high hopes and good intentions, which they retain despite clear indications that the change they are hoping for is not part of the libretto of this long running operetta.    

As Gilbert and Sullivan observed in HMS Pinafore, things are seldom what they seem.  When Buttercup tells the Captain that “skim milk masquerades as cream and high-lows pass as patent leathers,  “ even the hapless Captain is forced to admit, “ Very True. So they do.” 

This brings us to the official TWHBEA website and what the breed registry has to say about the use of performance packages on walking horses. You may be surprised to know that the registry coyly describes pads as “training devices”.

“Performance horses of the walking horse breed are commonly shown with double nailed and triple nailed pads to add dimension to the hoof, provide a sounder base, and change certain angles and paths in the motion of the hoof. Pads are an integral part of the training of the performance Tennessee Walking Horse. They serve various functions and when utilized properly, aid greatly in accentuating the gaits of the show horse. Pads are, essentially, training devices and their effectiveness and usefulness will vary with each individual horse. ”

In the real world, the definition of a training device is a tool developed to enhance the learning process.  There are training devices used in every field of sport.  Coaches, trainers, athletes and sports organizers, however, all recognize that a device is a means to the end, not an end in itself.  

In other athletic endeavors, when the training tool has enhanced the learning process, the tool is removed, presumably because the learner has learned the lesson and made the necessary improvements. If the learner can’t show an improvement when the device is taken away, then the use of the device has failed.

As an example, many training devices are sold which are intended to enhance the learning experience of golfers longing to improve their games.  There are devices that help to change the pattern of the swing, increase the strength of the golfer, help to correct golfers with a propensity to slice, or to improve their stance when facing the ball of following through with a swing.  

You could say, to paraphrase the TWHBEA, that these golf training devices are intended to provide a “sounder base or to change angles and paths in the motion of the “ ball. But, what you will never see is training devices allowed to be part of the competition that is a golf game. You can’t take your training   device out on the green and use it to actually play the game   without being laughed off the course.

If   the performance package is merely a training device, as TWHBEA would have us believe, once all performance horses have been trained and their gaits enhanced and accentuated, why should it be either necessary or allowable for a horse to wear his training device in competition?

The answer is: the performance package as TWHBEA is trying to peddle it is something masquerading as something else. The package is not a training device:  it is an integral part of producing and maintaining a totally artificial gait, which can neither be achieved nor maintained without this shoeing package.  Just like the use of the chain, the package is an over-sized    action device integral to the production of the big lick gait.

The willingness to put something forward as one thing when it is in reality something else, doesn’t stop at the TWHBEA website, it also extends to its magazine.  In a recent issue of Voice the magazine featured two side by side advertisements, one for Protect the Harvest, the other for an innocuous farm coating product. This could have been simple advertising with luck -of -the- draw placement for two unrelated entities. Things are seldom what they seem.

First, aside from those nice graphics of waving wheat, what   is Protect the Harvest? According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Protect the Harvest is not a simple, benign non-profit intended to promote agriculture and the values of family farmers.   It is actually an advocacy-based organization representing the interests of factory farming   with the stated mission of opposing the HSUS, in specific, and radical animal activists in general.   

According to the Center, no matter how you feel about the HSUS, a quick look at Protect the Harvest’s website makes it clear that its take on the organization is far from fair or balanced. 

This appeared on the site: “On the surface, they (HSUS) say they want to simply make life for animals (especially farm animals) a little bit nicer, safer…more pleasant. But the reality of there motives bleed through.  HSUS is an organization that is at its heart a vegan organization opposed to any consumption of animals for food, clothes or research.”

Whenoverblown and also untrue statements made by an organization about another organization join up with the “agriculture, including pet ownership, is under siege mentality” that Protect the Harvest promotes, there is reason to believe that HSUS must be succeeding in putting   economic pressure for change on the factory farming industry.   You don't fear organizations that are   having    no effect even if you hate them.   The conflation of agriculture with the walking horse industry means that Protect the Harvest and the people who brought you PSHA were bound to meet up.    This fear of success on behalf of regulation that protects animal welfare   puts Protect the Harvest and the performance walking horse faction in the same camp and that explains in part   why    this ad would be placed in Voice magazine.  

Protect the Harvest is actually the creation of a billionaire named Lucas of Lucas Oil, who also has a boutique beef business and is a big player in the auto racing industry.   Backed by big money and a sense of injury through federal overreach , Protect the Harvest hit the ground running at high rpms.

First up came the Protect the Harvest Political Action Committee, a super PAC.     Based in Iowa, the PAC was dedicated, according to its site, to combating the “radical animal rights movement”,  primarily the HSUS.    The treasurer of the PAC was Brian Klippenstein, who conveniently was also the executive director of Protect the Harvest, itself a 501(c) (4). The group was established in 2011 as a social welfare organization to educate the public about “the benefits of farming, ranching and hunting” and to advocate “for the right to conduct such activities.”

Although 501 (c) (4)’s may engage in politics, federal law asserts that attempts to influence elections may not be a primary purpose;  translated:  you have to have a PAC.   According to an AP story written by Seth Perlman, when filing paperwork with the FEC, the Harvest PAC told regulators that it “intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts”, presumably to help elect or defeat political candidates sympathetic to its purposes and goals.

As an example, in Missouri in 2014, Protect the Harvest donated money to a candidate who promised as part of his campaign that if elected   he would amend the state’s constitution to guarantee that there would be no infringement of the rights of Missourians to practice agriculture in any way they saw fit, which translated to essentially removing all legislative protections designed to protect the consumer, animals and the environment.

Who else does business with commercial agriculture, is involved in the racing industry, has a bone to pick with the HSUS,  and advertises in Voice magazine? The same guy that put the ad in Voice for a farm coating product on the opposite page of the Protect the Harvest ad. That would be Duke Thorson of Thorsport Farms and his interests are directly merged with the interests of those two pages of advertising although his name isn’t directly connected with either of them. 

Mr. Thorson, through one of his other enterprises, owns the farm coating company and also recently signed on Protect the Harvest as a sponsor of one of his racing trucks associated with NASCAR.   His Thorsport Farm is, as you may remember, the facility involved in an HSUS undercover investigation that documented soring practices in play at the Murfreesboro, Tennessee facility in 2015, with the story going national just before last year’s Celebration.  Mr. Thorson’s daughter, who attends school in Murfreesboro, was recently elected as a TWHBEA director from the state of Ohio. ( As Buttercup would remind us, “ Jackdaws strut in peacock feathers.” )  Mr. Thorson is far from a disinterested observer in how things turn out with the federal government when it comes to the Horse Protection Act and there is no doubt that he will act on his interests.  

Then, there’s one other entry in the "things are seldom what they seem" category. This one comes from the latest   USDA    report regarding swabbing results from the 2015 Celebration. Although the Celebration’s Veterinary Advisory Committee reported no prohibited substances found during the show (they did not test for soring agents), the USDA reports that out of 200 randomly selected horses, 175 or 87.5% tested positive for prohibited foreign substances.

Whether it’s trying to explain away the performance package as a training device,  or running ads in Voice magazine that appear to be one thing on the surface while actually representing more than simple advertising, or continuing to support and endorse The Celebration as the official breed championship when continuous and numerous violations of the federal Horse Protection Act are found and documented there each year, things are very seldom what they seem to be in the big lick walking horse business where  TWHBEA remains, thanks to funding provided by all    its members and everyone who registers or transfers a   horse with the group,  an active player.  

“Very true. So they do.”

Meet Tennessee State Representative Andy Holt, the Friend to Certain Farmers

“A man’s private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always. ”

— Mark Twain

“You’re not from here, ” Is one of the common criticisms levied against people who do not reside in the southern states where the peculiar institution and cultural tradition of the big lick show horse set is making its last stand.  Its defenders are    waging a battle both against public opinion and the federal government.   One person who definitely is “from here” is Tennessee State Representative Andy Holt (R-Dresden), who is, as would be expected,  a supporter of the self-styled walking horse industry. 

It’s good to know something about the private opinions, that can become public views,  of  the people representing voters at both the local and national level.  Thanks to Twitter,  Representative Holt, this week,  has given people in middle Tennessee both reason to know him and reason to be ashamed that they do.

It isn’t the $177,500 fine that Holt faces from the federal Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA)  for violating the Clean Water Act which is the cause for Holt’s recent notoriety. In private life, Holt, a factory type hog-farmer, has long expressed anti-federal sentiments, possibly because the EPA  opposed  his pumping of 800,000 gallons of wastewater contaminated with hog manure.    It makes sense, however,  if  you are from here, to know that Holt is the vice chair of the Tennessee House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, a frequent critic of the EPA,  and   continues to contest the constitutional right of the EPA to levy a fine on him for illegal dumping activities that contaminated the water in a free-running creek.

Leaving the water alone for a spell,   Holt has now chosen to dump his effluvia on the internet. In   his first act of the New Year, Holt took to Twitter for two days to send messages of support for the so-called militia members that have taken  over a federal building in Oregon. The armed takeover is headed by the Bundy brethren, the off shoots   of a Nevada rancher,  the cowboy hat   wearing Cliven Bundy,  who brought us interesting news in 2014 during his own  version of a standoff with the government over grazing rights on public land.  

If you’re not from here you have to wonder why thinking people would vote to elect a person like Holt whose reactionary views certainly are not what people should expect of an elected official sworn to uphold the rule of law and to defend both the U.S. Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution.  If you are from here you have to marvel that you can live with the embarrassment of having this guy as a state representative.  

Although Holt took down his #bundymilitia Where can I send support for your effort?  tweet , perhaps not understanding that in the world of the internet words last forever, or at least for long enough to be searchable, he also went on record this past  weekend, fighting  over several hours,  using the new offensive weapon of the tweet,   with the public. He got them all:  liberals, gays, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a city councilman from nearby Chattanooga in his outreach.   He also   called the openly gay councilman “girlfriend”, took on protests in Ferguson, MO, and extolled his vision of the Constitution, all this   as he celebrated the opening of a new year.

Although Holt  is entitled as a private citizen to his own world view,  as an elected official he is held to a better standard of deportment, or at least he should be. In   railing  against anyone who did not agree with his support for the actions of a clearly anti-government militia, armed and therefore potentially  dangerous, that took   over federal property in Oregon, are still holding it,  and show no signs of leaving,  those from here and not from here got a real look into who Representative Holt is and what he's all about.   

The insight explains why Holt  takes the legislative  positions and anti-federal government views,  he does, including support for big lick training barns and show rings.  Holt’s  short version is that no one or no entity, especially not the government ( apparently forgetting that the laws enforced by the federal government are constructed by the duly elected representatives of we- the- people ),   has the right to tell anyone else what to do with or how to use and manage personal property or run a business.  Fighting against government intrusion and over- reach  into doing whatever- we- want- to- do, however-we-want-to-do-it,    is a citizen's duty, as Holt sees it. As do all states-rights enthusiasts and anti-federal government fellow travelers,  Holt justifies his comments by quoting the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

Taking the 5th and quoting the   10th is popular with anyone, including horse abusers whose actions are monitored by a federal law called the Horse Protection Act. To refresh the memory, the 10th says: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  

Rancher and militia guy Ammon Bundy, too, is a big believer in the 10th amendment but  in the rule of law, not so much. He says he gets his direction from God.   Holt supports Bundy'srecent actions in Oregon.  We know thatbecause he's told us so.

It is further  interesting to note  that the hoopla going on in Oregon is being defined as  an agriculture issue. The word agriculture is becoming the buzzword for a variety of actions and stands that place opponents of federal rules, regulations,  and laws in stark opposition to enforcement.

 It is no accident that Celebration CEO Mike Inman,  in a recent letter to the Times-Gazette,  stated his case against the PAST Act while arguing   in support of alternate legislation supported by only a few congressmen and senators who “are from here”,  as being ‘either for or against the elimination of agriculture’.

It is no accident that Rising Star Ranch, one of the big breeders of show horses headed to performance horse barns and animated flat shod trainers, lists itself as an “agriculture/farming” site on Facebook. 

It is no accident that Thorsport’s truck  racing division, after the public release of the HSUS undercover investigation of its walking horse training facility in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, affiliated its NASCAR program with Protect  the Harvest, an anti-government regulation,  supposedly pro-agriculture (as Representative Holt defines pro-agriculture) organization.

It is no surprise, then,  that the 10th Amendment can be invoked in theory to give legitimacy to actual actions that go from dumping hog manured water into creeks to painting chemicals on the pasterns of show horses, all under the formerly good name of agriculture. This is a state's rights issue; the feds have nothing to say about it or so Holt and his supporters would have you believe.

In keeping with the attitudes of the people who are from here, those who frequently  defend the indefensible when it comes to animal welfare issues, Holt said about his support for Bundy and his followers: “ I do lend my moral support to the Bundy militia, or whatever they call themselves.”

 According to The Tennessean, Holt added (in retrospect)  that although he did not support the method of armed insurgency, he did support the militia’s frustration with the federal government, arguing that the federal government has too much power over land in the United States,  and speculating that activity like that taking place in Oregon was what was needed to bring attention to the issue. Holt apparently   neglected to notice in his comments thatBundy'smilitia action crossed over from legal, as in protest, to illegal,  when it became   occupation, and that by failing to notice,  Holt, himself,  has now endorsed illegal activity as a legitimate means to bring attention to anyissue. 

Reading Representative Holt helps those who aren’t from here understand a bit more why getting anything done at the national level  on the Walking Horse cruelty issue  has been decades in the making.  This sort of mind set, with deep roots in state legislatures and in federal officials representing these states,  is difficult to overcome.  

While some will be appalled by Holt’s comments  and his personal  actions down on the farm, others will applaud him for standing up to the feds,  just as they enthusiastically applaud and fund  the actions of Representatives Scott DesJarlais, Marsha Blackburn,   and other "from here" congressmen and women   in the House of Representatives and, notably, SenatorsMitchMcConnell andLamar Alexander over in the Senate.  They want these officials to push-back, hard,  against any legislation that they    regard as an intrusion of the federal government into their own private world of what they now think of as   “horse- farming”  and so far, they've gotten what they've paid for. 

Post Script: In identifying who the players are regarding the PAST Act,  it has recently been observed that in the Senate , the “influential Senator Johanns”, was no longer a co-sponsor of the  legislation.  The implication was   that he had pulled his co-sponsorship and this was seen as a setback. For the record: former Senator Johanns ( and former Agriculture Secretary) did not run for re-election and  left the Senate in January of 2015.  That’s  why you no longer see his name on the list of 50 active co-sponsors.

Glad Tidings at the End of the Year

Please note a correction to the Senate subcommittee previously referred to in this blog in error.

For a bit,  as we faced December,  it appeared that the show horse faction known as the performance horse business was having its own way. The USDA had approved the new Celebration backed HIO called the Walking Horse Equestrian Federation, same old stuff, different name, while  Middle Tennessee Representative in the House, Scott Desjarlais, once identified by a public service group as one of the more corrupt members of Congress, introduced on November 24th  his turkey of Anti-PAST Act legislation, a rehash of Marsha Blackburn’s( R-TN) earlier version that gained the same limited group of supporters in the House from nearby Tennessee states.

The Desjarlais bill inspired hapless Celebration CEO Mike Inman, a personal HPA violator, to write proudly in the December 10th issue of the  Shelbyville Times-Gazette that he would like “ to applaud Desjarlais for legislation that “goes to the heart of the problem in the regulation of Tennessee Walking Horses, an inspection system wrought with inconsistencies and fraud.  His bill also addresses the continued government overreach that is harming industry and small business all across America. “  

While accusing favored punching bags, Keith Dane and the HSUS,  of using misleading tactics and statistics to gain support for the PAST Act and using false statements to harm the industry, specifically  The Celebration and Shelbyville,  Mr. Inman went on to make a false statement of his own:   that the HSUS would like to completely eliminate the Tennessee Walking Horse from showing in any arena. 

Even Mr. Inman, as blind as he appears to be about what is the “real heart of the problems in the regulation of Tennessee Walking Horses”,  has to know that ‘s a lie. 

The HSUS is only one organization that,   in combination with the American Horse Council, the AVMA, the AAEP, most breed organizations and people like Willy Nelson, Monty Roberts, equine professionals including American Olympians, a former Head Rider of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, and scores of other equestrians from all disciplines, are  joined in the attempt  to eliminate the sore horse not horses in show rings.   This includes ending  shoeing practices that contribute to the sore lick, practices that are in direct contradiction to a balanced and natural way of going and where shoeing can also hide abuse to the foot. 

 Mr. Inman clearly refuses to hear that message and continues to tell the big lie about the people who oppose what he calls a Tennessee tradition and   the rest of the world calls institutionalized horse abuse ,  that is to say,  abuse intentionally practiced for  the sake of obtaining an exaggerated gait that has no purpose or  function outside of a specific   horse show oval.

Mr. Inman , however, saved his most outrageous comment for the final paragraph of his letter. He asked the reading audience, saying that the debate was clear ( but only if you were looking through his set of dark glasses), “ do you promote agriculture or do you promote the elimination of agriculture?”  

It’s true the show walking horse eats hay and grain and occupies space in a barn……but the big lick horse as a symbol of agriculture, only in a galaxy, far , far away, could that industry over-reach be remotely believable.

Still, it looked as if the year would end with the forces of what’s right for the horse stalemated before the forces of the status quo in Shelbyville.  Then, some good news finally came out of the Congress just before the legislators headed home for the holidays.

The funding omnibus bill passed by the House, approved by the Senate,  and signed into law by President Obama,  left intact the $697,000 in funding needed for the USDA to continue to attempt to enforce the existing Horse Protection Act.  There were no poison pill provisions included that would interfere with that enforcement. 

In the House, co-sponsorship of the PAST Act continued to climb steadily, even though events around the world having rightly taken over the headlines in the past months.

The American Horse Council continued to strongly support the passage of the PAST Act and reached out to all of its members with its endorsement of the anti-soring legislation introduced in both the Senate and the House.

But the best gift of all was  the news that Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican from the great agriculture state of Kansas and a senator who knows something about the importance of real agricultural programs,  has become the 50th co-sponsor of PAST in the Senate.  All senatorial support is welcome but Moran is also the chair of an important Senate subcommittee that oversees agriculture and other rural issues and alsoserves on the Commerce Committee.  This is a big deal because Senator Moran is definitely uninterested in, as Mr. Inman says, “promoting the elimination of agriculture”.

Meanwhile,  back in Shelbyville the locals put on a horse show, Walking for the Angels, intended to provide gifts for the needy children of Bedford County. On the face of it this is a worthy project. 

There has to be, however,  another way for needy children to receive toys than for horses  to be put in pain, as USDA inspection results show,  as part of the gift-wrapping. 

What continues to drive support for PAST is the realization across the country that pain- based, completely artificial gaits are nothing to celebrate and certainly nothing that society as a whole can support.   This    growing body of awareness gives those advocates working to end soring a  reason to be joyful as 2015 closes and we move forward with renewed energy into 2016. 

“…What a Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice to Deceive”

Please Note this Correction of an Error in Fact: An earlier version of this blog post identified, incorrectly, Walker Blankinship as a veterinarian, although he was introduced to the audience as such.   The information regarding his credentials   was received from a panelist from the panel on soring that was held during the Film Festival in question. The comments made by Mr. Blankinship are, however,  accurate reflections of the opinions he offered during the session.  Edits made to this blog post now reflect Blankinship's correct status as a Mr. rather than as a DVM. 

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt. ”

— Mark Twain

Yesterday, residents of Memphis, Tennessee, awoke to find their city’s open green space covered with a tracery of what appeared to be lines of frost. It wasn’t. Instead it was a series of   complex webs, woven by hundreds of thousands of spiders.    This industry by the spiders has turned part of Memphis into something from a science fiction movie and the residents are not amused. One terrified but determined lady told reporters that her house was covered in spiders, speaking with her back to the camera as she whacked the invaders with her shoe. 

Those who study arachnids say that there has to be a good reason why millions of these spiders, usually unseen in the open fields, decided to take to the road, en masse, just before the Thanksgiving holiday; they just don’t know yet what caused the sudden migration.  They also helpfully pointed to all the beneficial things that spiders do,  but those explanations fell on deaf ears in Memphis.

Meanwhile, the other Tennessee spider web, the one that represents the interests of the performance horse business,  also continues to spread by spinning.  Last week in Washington, D.C.,  Tennessee’s Scott Desjarlais, the congressman of choice for the big lick industry,  who several years ago made a watchdog group's list of the most corrupt officials in Congress, reintroduced alternate legislation to the PAST Act, essentially a rehash of last session’s Blackburn bill. And, yes, Congresswoman Blackburn is also a co-sponsor on this version of the industry-approved plan.

Then, just this weekend, also from its home base in middle Tennessee and supported by favored southern states like Kentucky, Georgia,  Mississippi, Missouri,  and Alabama, PSHA spun out an anchor line, attached itself,  and appeared via proxy in New York City. There, an Equine Film Festival,  featuring a panel on soring as part of its program, added to its panel   Walker Blankinship,  a pro-carriage horse advocate who was to present the performance force’s side of the story as it had been told to him by PSHA stalwarts.   ( The plight of carriage horses on the streets of NYC was, to refresh memories, what officially began the humane movement in the United States back a long, long time ago, and it continues to be a contentious issue today.   )

When the moment came to do his thing, Mr. Blankinship wove quite a tangled web, indeed; but it was not all misinformation. He told the audience that he had never been in a Tennessee Walking Horse performance horse barn nor had he ever examined a Tennessee Walking Horse, perhaps as an unusual way of establishing his credentials as an expert on the subject?   His ignorance of the issues, therefore, can be expected, but it cannot be excused; his arrogance in appearing isin keeping with the arrogance of those who advocate for the positions that he presented. This is what sound horse advocates have come to expect.

 Blankinship denied the existence of cruelty in the training of the walking horse show horse , presenting a tissue of lies while reciting talking points, of which he had no first hand knowledge, as facts. He used as input the word of the same people trying to put a stake in the heart of the PAST Act and extinguish the public outcry about horses that are sored with chemical and/or mechanical means.  He is also,  reportedly,  a supporter of Humane Watch and a virulent opponent of the HSUS. 

Among Mr.  Blankinship’s attempts at putting out dis-information  at the forum were the following highlights:

Soring isn’t happening. (Pay no attention to those pesky USDA statistics from the past 5 years alone or the most recent crop of federal cases)

Show people love the horses and would never intentionally harm them. (Just as some football players love their wives and yet are still arrested for domestic abuse.)

The industry has a zero tolerance policy for soring; if you’re caught, you’re kicked out (and there are people in Brooklyn, Mr.  Blankinship, who have heard that you are looking for a bridge to buy. If Mr.  Blankinship had bothered to check the HPA violations for soring/HPA violations that have accrued to the top contenders in the industry’s Riders’ Cup standings, he would know what zero tolerance really means in the big lick business. The multi-year HPA history of most of the industry's Hall of Fame members might also come as a shock.   )

.

Heavy chains are illegal in the barns (and clearly he would know this because he has never been in a barn or picked up a chain from the chain carts that are standard equipment in the barns.  Nor are heavy chains illegal, Mr.  B, they are simply inhumane in the way they are used, causing,  at the least,  inflammation that reflects evidence of pain. You can get a copy of the outdated Auburn Study on line, the industry’s favorite study, but I suggest you read it, rather than allowing others to tell you what it says.  Then you might want to take a look at the Ames Study. )

100% of horses are swabbed at EVERY Show (Poor Mr.  Blankinship! He clearly did not know that   random swabbing of only a small percentage of horses is done at some shows and the positive results for foreign substances including mustard oil, kerosene, croton oil, and other mixtures, from even this small sample, are much higher than you would expect from horses belonging to people who love them and would never intentionally harm them. )

Doubtless, too, the people who sent Mr.  Blankinship forth to weave would have been happier if he had remembered the name of the organization that he applauds and perhaps omitted the names of two others.  He called PSHA, the Performance Show Association or the Performance Association and cited two HPA violators as leaders of PHSA and pillars of the industry.  He could not, because he was so well informed,  tell audience members how to contact the organization directly. 

The moderator of the panel, seeing steam coming from the ears of other panel members and members of the audience, kept tight control of the program and did not allow a riot of opposition facts to develop.  Instead, it was left to a racetrack vet on the panel to give Mr. Blankinship the equivalent of the cut direct.

He told the clueless Mr. Blankenship that he, too, knew nothing about Tennessee Walking Horses, but he’d seen enough cheating on the track to see things that were related to what people will do to win and to know this cheating for what it is. He also told him that he “had a problem with his numbers and that they didn’t add up.”

The representative of the HSUS on the panel, attorney Leana Stormont, who worked tirelessly in both the Jackie McConnell and Barney Davis cases, as well as with the recent Thorsport undercover investigation, said in her closing remarks that for Mr.  Blankinship to claim that the PAST Act wasn’t needed was unconscionable.  The audience, according to reports, agreed with that assessment.  

It wouldn’t have been a film festival, however, without the chance to have the lights turned down and film rolled.  Thus, Mr.  Blankinship did get to see at least one of the films featured at the Film Festival. He had a front row seat for the repeat showing of the most recent undercover investigation of a performance horse facility done by the HSUS.  He has now seen the inside of a Tennessee Walking Horse facility, at least from the comfort of his chair.  

From the safety of a center web position, Walker   Blankinship   was, apparently, content with offering opinions on this specialized area of equine abuse without feeling the need to examine the condition of horses rescued from big lick training or without knowing the history of any of the players. 

Walker Blankinship turned up in New York City and he delivered the talking points he was given. He delivered the goods he was sold.    You have to give him credit for spinning, even if the web he built was marred by torn silk.  There is every reason to believe, however,  that with more practice in telling the big whopper, he could do better. The people whose word he has taken as gospel certainly have learned to do so, meaning that this skill can be learned and,  with practice,  improved, thereby building stronger webs with which to snare the uninformed whenever an opportunity arises to do so in public. 

Correlation is Not Causation and other sayings

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs one step at a time.”

— Mark Twain in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

The sentence “correlation is not causation” is used as a sort of shorthand for explaining to the rest of us, those who are not statisticians, why pseudo- statistics that are used to make a point may simply be based in opinion and have no provable validity.   Events or actions that take place can be strung together to make a point,  yet doesn’t mean that the point that they make is valid. This is why legitimate polls or studies are constructed to be scientifically accurate within a plus or minus margin of error, even as other polls and studies are constructed with questions or directed research producing the result that the commissioners of the poll hope to achieve.

In order to track what’s really going on in breed registrations and in membership numbers, Debbie Fuentes, the registrar of the Arabian Horse Association based in Aurora, Colorado, recently released the results of her statistical gathering of information obtained directly from a variety of equine breed registries in the United States.

Ms. Fuentes’ numbers are the best indicator that horsemen now have of current trends and health within the larger equine industry because the American Horse Council last published its own survey on the subject in 2005, ironically, the year that America’s economy came close to meltdown.  Gathering data directly from the breed associations , Ms. Fuentes distilled the numbers into revealing percentages (and yes, the AQHA with its versatile Quarter Horse breed, continues to lead the pack as America’s favorite horse,  according to the data.)

Ms. Fuentes has released figures and stays away from opinions. Her findings   should be cause for concern for the TWHBEA and for all who love the Tennessee Walking Horse.

It has become habitual for  industry leaders to point  to the economic downturn in the country as the primary cause of both lost revenue and a decline in the breeding for walking horses.  Many   have also habitually  ignored the elephant in the room: the steadily gaining perception in America, based on evidence and the official positions of the American Horse Council, the AVMA and the AAEP regarding soring and the need for corrective federal legislative action.  These organizations and many others realize that a particular aspect of the Tennessee Walking Horse demonstrated in the show ring is not only unsightly, but is produced through techniques that at the worst constitute animal cruelty and at the least use practices that enlightened horsemen have discarded.

 Trying to coax change from this element of the walking show horse faction   has proven to be largely a frustrating waste of time, but a look at the facts might make an impact.  If you are a business person with an investment in the walking horse "industry",  economics rather than emotion should be driving business decisions. 

The Great Recession began in 2005 and, using standard economic indicators, is commonly held to have ended in 2009, although the economy has been slow to recover in many parts of the country.  The recession   undoubtedly did play a part in declines in horse ownership, breeding, showing, membership in equine organizations, and falling sales prices across the spectrum of the horse world; now, however, six years into recovery, according to Ms. Fuentes, some organizations have started the slow climb back to profitability and show increases in breeding, sales, and membership or at least the leveling off of losses.  The TWHBEA and by extension the Tennessee Walking Horse as a breed is not on either list. Inquiring minds should be asking why?

Correlation is not causation, but a case can be made that through the leadership of the executive committee of the TWHBEA, actions like the construction of recent by-law changes and the ‘disciplining’ of members who have chosen to speak out on issues that are verboten , are the result of conscious decisions made to relieve the TWHBEA of the burden of having to deal with those who continue to raise questions about this sort of training,   the presentation of this particular type of show horse,  and the determination of a small but powerful few to persist in its promotion.  The Welcome mat is definitely not out in Lewisburg for "you people" who don't see it "our way" or don't support "our horse".

The recent news that the TWHBEA is seeking potential candidates for its 2016 Executive Committee term,   asking for a blend of “new and experienced executive committee members” with “geographical balance of representation to be placed on the nominating slate” and “a mix of breeders, show horse owners, and pleasure horse riders with a variety of business backgrounds so that all executive committee members are competent to address all aspects of TWHBEA business” , sounds encouraging.  Then you realize that many of the people who could once have actually filled those positions, bringing new ideas and a new perspective , as well as a social conscience,  to the table   have either never been able to get elected to the board of directors in states dominated by the show horse faction or have already walked away from the association,  tired of coming to Tennessee and leaving poorer for hotel and airline expenses     while having achieved nothing that meant anything to them.   

TWHBEA talking about inclusivity while drawing from an exclusive pool makes a good sound bite but over the years the outsiders, the "you people"  have gotten wiser about where they will invest time, effort and   money.  Many former devoted TWHBEA supporters now participate in alternate horse show venues and are among the most active supporters of the PAST Act.  

While the TWHBEA prefers to play the part of another animal with a swingy gait , the ostrich, the registrar of the Arabian Horse Association is focused with laser precision about what is going on in the macro   world of horses. Why would she care?  Could it be that the AHA having suffered, long before the Great Recession, its own spectacular meltdown in sales and breeding, thanks to speculation driven prices and a series of its own breed scandals that eroded trust in the brand, learned from these lessons and vowed never to be blindsided again? 

Correlation is not causation but whatever her reasons, Ms. Fuentes has done the equine world a favor by eliminating the spin put out by breed organizations and focusing simply on the numbers.  Liars may  figure, but accurate figures don’t lie and that’s why her research should be a jolt by ice water for the TWHBEA.

According to an article published in TheHorse.com Ms. Fuentes found that in 2013 TWHBEA registered (defined as foals and young horses and ownership transfers) 4,152 horses. In 2014 that number decreased to 2,825, a decrease of more than 35%. 

As to membership in the breed registry, in 2014 the actual number of TWHBEA members was 5,019, the biggest decline of any breed registry organization, surpassing a loss of 22% in actual members.  (By comparison, at one point in the late 1990s the actual membership of TWHBEA was reported to exceed 21,000 and equine journals talked about the walking horse as one of the country’s fastest growing breeds. What a difference less than 20 years can make.  )  

To repeat, in 2014 TWHBEA had a decrease in registrations of more than 35% and a decline in membership of more than 22%, the highest decline of any of the breed organizations that Ms. Fuentes included in her statistical sampling. 

As other breed organizations and their related breeds have begun  to climb out of a deep hole or at least began to hold level, the TWHBEA and the Tennessee Walking Horse continued its slide, down, down, down. 

The “supporting all disciplines” faction of the walking horse breed refuses to acknowledge that one particular aspect of the show ring business may be taking the horse itself down with it.  Those who do acknowledge the problem in private, have a public attitude that holding the line even with diminishing returns  is preferable to making the changes that would restore respectability to the brand and bring back the members who have voted with their feet because of the ongoing issues, including: 

Ø  The continued presence of abusive training methods and the sored horse in the show ring

Ø  The elevation of HPA violators to leadership positions and the use of these individuals as both judges and committee chairmen and women

Ø   The preference for an aberrant gait and unnatural shoeing techniques,

Ø  Cronyism between the breed registry and a particular aspect of the show world and preference for a particular HIO at the expense of the interests of a broader range of members

Ø  A growing realization and resulting disillusionment on the part of many members that no meaningful change would be effected within the breed registry.

When these former members and some directors fully understood that money they spent with the registry and the established show circuit was being used to promote and to protect a small  aspect of the breed, at the expense of the breed as a whole,  they determined that      in conscience they could neither endorse nor support practices which they felt were abusive. Some of these     owners   changed breeds, as Patty Beaty recently   told Congressman Duncan of Tennessee , to get away from the stigma associated with the walking horse business.

In thinking about sentences that are used as shorthand, here’s another one: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” As the statisticians tell us, “correlation is not causation”, but there are times in   insane situations where      correlation points the way to discovering why different results can’t be achieved. 

The reality is that the march into negative numbers began all the way back in the early 2000s, well before the Great Recession was contemplated and long before Jimmy McConnell became on ABC  the poster person for the problem. The decline  has  not been  externally driven; it began with an internal revolt that has become a public discussion.

As with any addiction, hitting bottom is necessary to finally sobering up. Ms. Fuentes’ numbers should be a wake-up call for the TWHBEA and its declining band of old-faithful’s but it’s unlikely that necessary change will be made without further implosion. Things aren't great but they haven't seen the bottom yet.

The property rights and    true believers now in charge  are still looking for all of the outside reasons why the business is on the skids.  They have yet to take a hard look at themselves to determine if maybe, just maybe, the problem is of their own making, of wanting a change without making the necessary ones.  

(This might also   be the reason that the nostalgic tune historically  played by the organist at the end of each Celebration session,  “ I love you just the way you are”,  continues to be a favorite with the performance horse crowd.  It is reported that Nero, too, fiddled while Rome burned. )