LIFE WITH THE TROTTEKS. 197 



legs would swell very badly. TMs is the greatest trouble I 

 had with the horse. About the twelfth of May I was able 

 to drive him miles in about 2:33. In watching Ford the 

 year before I saw that he had a disposition to want to break 

 and run, being what they call a first-class breaker. This I 

 consider a grievous fault in any horse, and one that will 

 ruin many horses' chances of winning where they would 

 otherwise get the money. My idea about horses of this 

 kind is that if the time and strength expended by them in 

 breaking and catching were to be put in at honest trotting 

 it would give them a very much faster record. I have heard 

 people say that Goldsmith Maid gained when she broke, 

 but I noticed that when she trotted miles in 2:15 or better 

 she never made more than one break in the whole mile. 

 Deck Wright, Grey Salem, Lem Scott, and all that tribe of 

 hurdlers made their best records in the heats in which they 

 ran the least and trotted the most. In training Ford, I 

 drove him on a trot all the time, never allowing him to get 

 close enough to the top of Ms speed to have him show a 

 disposition to break. He seemed uneasy when a horse took 

 him by the head, and sometimes when he was being out- 

 trotted tried to break with you. I worked him alone a great 

 deal at first, and when I did take a horse out to work with 

 him I did not allow the other one to pinch Ford hard enough 

 to make him want to break. 



As we were to trot the match race with Bonesetter on 

 the 12th day of June, I felt anxious to give Ford one or two 

 races before that event came off. I entered him in two races, 

 both of which he won, trotting five heats in each race. He 

 beat Will Cody over the Elkhart track a five-heat race in 

 which 2:30 was the fastest heat, and he had all he could 

 possibly do to win. This race acted on Ford as I expected 

 it would; made him a better horse. The other race was 

 against Lucy, a black mare owned in Canada, driven by a 

 man named Palmer, and called among the boys "The 

 Queen' s Own. ' ' They trotted over the Adrian track, which 

 is rather slow, and Ford won in five heats trotting one of 



