EVERY MAN HIS OWN TRAINER. 1 57 



this volume in their hands, and thus get an inkling of the 

 Palo Alto system. And I trust that both this work and my 

 own, when complete, will be sufficiently instructive to deserve 

 well of all breeders, trainers, and horse lovers in general. 



At the outset, then, I desire the reader to understand 

 that in writing this chapter no thought of a complete elucida- 

 tion of the Palo Alto system is entertained. I can only 

 endeavor to give a general idea of that system, touching 

 briefly on the salient outlines, and leaving the treatment of 

 details to the volume of which this chapter is but a faint and 

 distant echo. 



Every trainer has his own ideas, his own peculiar methods, 

 and his private reasons for them. The methods practised at 

 Palo Alto are, I am aware, somewhat unusual, and in some of 

 their features perhaps radical. The probabilities are that if 

 these methods were to be passed upon by a jury composed of 

 all the trainers in the country, they w^ould be condemned by 

 a large majority. Indeed, had these njiethods been outlined 

 and submitted to such a jury ten years ago, the popular voice 

 would have loudly proclaimed not only that such training 

 never did make a trotter, but that it never r^///<^ make one. 

 Yet by these same methods have been developed the fastest 

 yearling, the fastest two-year-old, and the fastest four-year- 

 old trotters the world has seen. Under them a yearling has 

 been taught to trot in 2:31^, a two-year-old in 2:18, a three- 

 year-old in 2:19^, and a four-year-old in 2:16, not to mention 

 dozens of other trotters of high merit. Only one three-year- 

 old in the world has trotted a mile as fast as Palo Alto's 

 champion two-year-old ; and every man knows that scores of 

 aged horses have been trained for seasons before they could 

 gain a mark equal to that of the dead yearling Norlaine ! Do 

 not these facts seem to show that there is merit in this sys- 

 tem. If there is no merit in the system, surely then the Palo 

 Alto horses must be the most wonderful born trotters in the 

 world ! 



I neither ask or counsel any trainer or any breeder to 



