190 TRAINING THE TROTTING HORSE. 



is sometimes required ; there is always occasion for 

 gentleness, but harshness, violence and bad temper are 

 vices in a colt-trainer that wholl}^ unfit him for his 

 business. The trainer that has the colts' confidence and 

 respect will do more and do it easier than the one who 

 is regarded by the colt with only fear and distrust. 

 You will never either scare or club him into being a 

 record-breaker ; if it cannot be done by rational educa- 

 tion it cannot be done at all. 



Twenty years ago the average trainer believed that 

 the time to break a colt was at from three to four years 

 old. The first performance was a stand-up fight be- 

 tween the trainer and the colt, and perhaps the colt 

 came out of the mill worsted — he certainh^ came out 

 Avorse. It took all conceivable appliances to hold him. 

 He was strong and willful, had never known subjection, 

 and hence fierceh^ resented it. By the time he was 

 " broken " to go properly, the trainer thought he had 

 educated him, while in fact he had simply broken his 

 spirit. Then when the colt was subdued to tract- 

 ability, and training him to trot began, he was worked 

 like an old horse, speeded mile heats, and two or three 

 or four of them in a day, according to vrhether the 

 trainer believed in '" plenty work " or not. He, accord- 

 ing to these old ideas, must be reduced low in flesh, 

 well " drawn up," and hence he was " put on rations " 

 and his appetite denied especially before a race. Then 

 the horse was not considered of much account unless he 

 would "take hold of the bit,'' or in other words unless 

 he was a puller, and many of the matches were not so 

 much matches between horse and horse as between 

 driver and horse. Has not every farmer's boy been 



