my horse isle 3 blog

If you ever see a horse wearing these padded 'shoes' (called stacks) on its feet, you are looking at an abused horse

Stacks are used in a riding discipline called padded performance, or more commonly known as big lick. In this discipline, the goal is to create as big and flashy of a walk as possible.

To get a big flashy walk, big lick trainers put weights on the horse's front feet (to make it lift the legs higher) and use action chains, which smack against the ankles every time the horse moves (making it lift the legs faster to try and escape from the painful chains). Though it's technically illegal, many trainers also use soring, where they rub mustard oil or kerosene onto the horse's ankles (to cause pain so it has a stronger reaction to the action chains). Soring is widely accepted in padded performance, and trainers will apply chemical irritants to their horses at shows, out in the open for everyone to see.

Horses naturally carry 60% of their body weight on the front legs. When the front legs are sore, they'll carry more weight on their hind legs, which causes rapid joint degeneration. It's not unheard of for retired big lick horses to have completely deformed hind legs

There is no ethical way to do padded performance. Big lick riders will talk about how stacks don't cause issues (often citing one study that looked at padded horses slowly walking on a treadmill without rider), how soring is illegal, how hard-working their farriers are, how closely they work with veterinarians, how their horses live like kings, how beloved their horses are, etc., but it's all talk.

If you see a horse with stacks, you are looking at an abused horse.

I'll add a few relevant videos under the cut (from least to most graphic)

Unless they're sored. They are painful when the horse is sored, of course. If you put a chain on painful, sensitive skin, it hurts like hell!

Paso Fino horses, whose name translates to “smooth step”, are a breed that displays what’s known as an ambling gait, an intermediate walking pace between a walk and a gallop, commonly replacing trotting. While it might look unusual, the ability to amble is something certain horses are just born with: it has been traced to a mutation in a single gene that has been selectively bred for by humans since antiquity. Some gaited breeds seem to be more prone to certain health conditions than other non-gaited breeds, but these conditions are far from unique to gaited animals and don’t seem to be caused by ambling in itself.

Gaited horses were highly prized in medieval Europe due to the fact that riding them is particularly comfortable, especially during long stretches of time and while traveling on uneven terrain. As travel by carriage became more popular, though, they fell out of fashion. In the present day, most gaited horse breeds come from the Americas, being the descendants of gaited horses brought along by the Spanish in the 16th century, although a few gaited breeds can still be found in Europe and Asia.

Some examples of horses who display ambling gaits are (clockwise) the American Saddlebred, the Mangalarga Marchador, the Icelandic Horse and the Mongolian Horse.