The abuse of Tennessee walking horses has been in the news since The HSUS released video footage of one of the industry's top trainers striking a horse in the face with a wooden handle and pouring injurious chemicals onto the feet of a horse. It was four decades ago that Congress passed the Horse Protection Act to prevent and criminalize soring and other abuses of horses. Tennessee state representative Janis Sontany wrote in a column in The Tennessean on Sunday: Soring has been a well-kept dirty secret in this industry and it's time for this nonsense to end.