214 PROFESSIONAL HARDSHIPS. 
What then was the solution? Simply this: The owncr 
unfortunately had listened to his friends, instead of, as 
previously, hearing what his trainer has had to say. It 
cannot be doubted for an instant, that the trainer studies 
his own interest in studying the interest and pleasure of 
his employer ; and that to think or to wish to do otherwise 
would be madness. There is a greater desire to serve an 
old client, and more pleasure in doing so, than to serve half- 
a-dozen new ones, whose good qualities are taken on sup- 
position, for they may be impostors. But amongst old clients 
many are known to the trainer as valuable patrons and good 
men. This one may be peevish, but he is genuine; the 
other has his crotchets, but he is liberality itself. 
Sometimes the origin of the change is amusing. The late 
Mr. Hilton, an eccentric gentleman, told me that he removed 
his horses from the late Mr. Harlock, because one of them 
was choked with a carrot in the night, and found dead in 
the morning ; adding “ his trainer should have prevented it.” 
Mr. took his horses away from Danebury because he 
backed Lady Elizabeth to win the Derby and she did not. 
A very worthy old friend and most estimable man, a client 
of mine, without the least wish to create unpleasantness or 
be thought officious, thinks no horse’s feet can be properly 
attended to that he has not seen cut out and the shoes put 
on: otherwise his heels are too high, his toes too long, soles 
too bare, his feet want paring down; or it is the reverse of 
all this ; his shoes are always too thick or too thin, too 
long or too short, and have too few or too many nails, 
and the largest number generally placed on the wrong 
side, or drawn on too tight or insecurely fixed. And yet 
I think I have had as few lame horses as any one elsewhere, 
notwithstanding all this terrible catalogue of existing wrongs. 
