A friend of mine returned this week from a trip to the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration in Shelbyville, Tennessee. This friend, from the equine protection unit of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), attends every year to monitor first-hand the abuses inherent in the Walking Horse world known as “soring.” What he saw once again this year, he wrote, re-confirmed that this so-called Tennessee tradition is “nothing more than a celebration of cruelty.”
Thanks to him, I’ve become pretty well versed in (and repulsed by) soring and the controversy that surrounds it—and worked with him in what some might view as a bit of a strange bedfellow relationship to help put a permanent end to it. A few of us put a coalition together in fact called Conservatives Against Animal Abuse, to help give conservatives who care about animal welfare a voice in the soring fight. (Let me tell you, anyone who thinks equine welfare—and animal welfare in general—is not a “conservative issue” is quite........