The Feds

In the piece I wrote for The Rail, I alluded to the Horse Protection Act:

“The thoroughbred industry has been notoriously opposed to Federal intervention, which is understandable in that it threatens the independence of a tradition-steeped sport. Moreover, a glance at the federal legislation that regulates the Tennessee Walking Horse industry should cause any horseman some unease. While the Horse Protection Act has certainly reduced the amount of abusive practices at Walking Horse shows, its implementation has been clumsy, as federal regulation lacks the nuances and elasticity that are required in the horse business.”

Anyone currently pushing for federal regulation of the horse racing industry should take a hard look at the article that appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader this morning.

Does this sound familiar? A sector of the horse industry was having a lot of PR issues related to the treatment of horses in competitions. There were allegations of abuse, and many of them were true. The industry was asked to ‘clean up its act’ on its own, but it failed. Federal legislation was enacted, and in came the feds to regulate abusive practices, especially the use of ‘prohibited substances.’ That was in 1970. So is the industry “fixed” now? Not so much.

Walking Horse competitions are theoretically regulated by the USDA, which I suppose is the natural administrative branch to regulate horses. These USDA testers are supposed to come in to the Walking Horse competitions, test the horses for “soring” practices (soring makes the horses step higher, a desired trait), and penalize trainers/owners if their horses test positive. But the budget is so strapped that they often have to hire local testers, which brings a very political factor into the mix. Moreover, and this is the complaint you’ll hear the most from Walking Horse people, the testing process itself is incredibly subjective.

There’s swabbing, where the testers take swabs of the horses’ skin on their pasterns to test for caustic agents. And there’s palpation, where the tester will “palpate” (i.e. ‘crank on’) the pastern to try to trigger a reaction from the horse.

Let me tell you a story about my horse. Last summer, I went to pick up his right front to clean his hoof out, and he jerked his leg away from me. I ran my fingers down the tendon behind his canon bone, and he flinched away from me again. Increasingly worried, I put his foot down and felt his leg for heat, comparing it to the other leg. I squinted at it to see if it was at all swollen. Both legs were cold and tight. I picked up the other front leg to see if I could get the same reaction, but I couldn’t. So I picked up the original leg and started palpating one tendon after another: the deep digital flexor tendon, the superficial digital flexor tendon, and the suspensory. Really cranking on them, I got no reaction. Then I just ran my fingers lightly behind his canon bone again: he jerked his leg away. He ended up being completely sound. His reaction remained a mystery.

And that’s the thing with horses, and the reason that I referred to the federal regulation of the Walking Horse industry as “heavy-handed” and lacking nuance. Because this all seems easy on paper (horses flinch at palpation when they’ve had a caustic agent applied to their pastern; therefore all horses who flinch at palpation have had a caustic agent applied, right?). Are abusive practices a serious problem in the Walking Horse industry? Yes. Are all of these horses testing positive the result of abusive practices? No.

The result: heated standoffs between trainers and the feds. At one show in 2006 trainers simply refused to bring their horses to be tested, in protest of the process itself. The police were summoned. That year they canceled the ‘World Grand Champion’ class at the national show, because, after all the testing was done, only three horses were qualified to show; their trainers chose to go home instead. And at the show the Herald-Leader article mentions, competitors scattered when the USDA showed up with an escort of armed guards.

Meanwhile, the abusive practices continue.

If nothing else, I hope whoever is in charge looks to this example in crafting federal legislation to regulate the horse racing industry. With the added spice of wagering, I cannot imagine that it’s going to be any easier.