832 TRAINING THE TROTTING HORSE. 



It is to be remembered, in discu sing tlie trotter from the stand- 

 point of tlie average American farmer, tliat be is something more 

 than a racing-animal. He is the ideal horse of business and pleasure. 

 No driving-horse in the world rivals the trotting-bred horse, and they 

 range in size from the neatest style of light-harness animal to coach- 

 ing stature. The horse best adapted to the uses of the American 

 farmer, and the average American citizen who uses horses at all, is 

 the one that, with other essentials, combines quick, far-reaching, 

 well-balanced action with the endurance to sustain speed at high 

 rates and long distances. These, too, are the qualities primarily re- 

 quired in a horse for racing purposes, and thus the blood best for the 

 trotting-turf is the best blood from which to breed the horse of the 

 road, the park and the boulevard — the horse for the lightest single 

 driving equipage, for the family phaeton or for double harness. 

 Qualities required for these eminently proper purposes are produced 

 in the highest degree by the best trotting-blood. We can only deter- 

 mine what the best trotting-blood is by the measure of turf tests and 

 turf history. The fact should not be forgotten by those who may 

 have no interest in the American trotter in a turf sense that the value 

 of the light-harness horse rests in a large degree upon the purity and 

 quality of his blood, and that the worth of blood can only be deter- 

 mined by what it has accomplished under the turf test. 



To persons accustomed to horses the differences of the various 

 gaits are familiar, but to fix them clearly in the mind is a first neces- 

 sity in studying the subject of breeding horses in which value 

 depends on speed at a certain gait. The walk, the trot or the pace, 

 and the gallop are gaits common to all breeds. The pace, or amble, 

 is a gait kindred to the trot and is a faster gait than the trot. The 

 order of movement in the trot is left fore foot, right hind foot, 

 right fore foot, left hind foot. Thus the left fore and right hind 

 foot move in unison, striking the ground together; then in turn 

 right fore foot and left hind foot complete the revolution, and, 

 therefore, the trot is properly called the "diagonal gait." The 

 pacer, like the trotter, moves two feet in the same direction simul- 

 taneously, then alternates with the other two, but in place of the 

 fore leg and the hind leg of opposite sides, he moves in unison 

 the fore and hind leg of one side, then the fore and hind leg of 

 the other side. Thus we call the pace the " lateral gait." The dif- 

 ference of the gaits is not great; the mechanism is practically the 

 same. The fact that the same animals pace and trot fast, that 



