The Humane Society of the United States does many undercover investigations to get the information and evidence they need in order to fight problems. In one of their recent investigations, they looked into the cruelties against Tennessee Walking Horses at a training facility called ThorSport in Tennessee. This breed is very popular in horse shows and people pay good money for them. They also pay a tremendous amount of money to trainers to get the horses looking the way they want. But some trainers have been taking it way too far.
They’ve been using a technique called “soring” in order to get the unnatural gait called the “Big Lick”. The gait looks very fancy and flashy, so I could see why people would want their horse to perform this way. However, I think if people knew the cruelty each horse went through to be able to perfect this gait, they would be horrified. The trainers force the horses into “unnatural high heeled shoes” and then put diesel fuel and other harsh chemicals around their ankles. Dozens of these chemicals tested positive for banned soring substances, many of them being toxic to organs. They then wrap up the horse ankles allowing the chemicals to “cook” into the skin. This inflicts tremendous pain to the horses, which is what causes them the flick their feet up creating the “Big Lick” gait.
Once the wraps are removed, you can see the tender look of the skin. The ankles become very “sensitive and irritated,” and sometimes this becomes unbearable for the horse. In the video below, you can hear a horse whimpering and crying due to the tremendous pain being inflicted upon it. But the trainers don’t stop there. They go a step further and wrap chains around the ankles that strike the tender area every time the horse steps, causing them to flick their feet up high, creating the “Big Lick” gait. All of this for what? A prize ribbon.
This video stirs up a lot of emotions for me, and I think they did a great job of incorporating just enough pathos to get us riled up. Watching the video, at first I was in shock about the extents they went to just to win a prize. Then once I heard that horse crying, I have to say, I shed a tear or two. Once the video ended, I was extremely mad at the people doing this. These feelings are exactly what the creators of this video wanted you to feel. Like Jay Heinrichs says in his book Thank You For Arguing, “You can persuade someone logically, but as we saw in the last chapter, getting him out of his chair to act on it takes something more combustible.” The video provides us with many facts, but it’s the pathos, the emotions, that really got to me. They put the crying horse in the video for one reason: to get us to act.
And boy should we! Watch the video below to see for yourself.
And boy should we! Watch the video below to see for yourself.