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Show The Blood Horse A FRIEND writes us expressing the belief that we have too much admiration for the thoroughbred thor-oughbred horse, and cites the opinion widely wide-ly prevalent that American thoroughbreds have been inbred so much that their constitutions have been weakened; that they cannot endure the hardships that their forefathers endured of old; that their cousins now endure on their native deserts. All of which we do not for a moment believe. From coHhood the thoroughbred in this country has his box stall and is petted. On the desert the Arabian colt from birth has to keep up the march with his dam, and when feed is scarce has to rustle for it. Take a petted American Ameri-can boy and set him at work beside a peasant boy of the same age from any land of Europe, and the peasant foreigner wears out the American Amer-ican boy in three days. But the American armies in our civil war were in the north 65 per cent American born, in the south probably 90 per cent. Did ever a foreign column do what Stonewall Jackson's command did on that day at Chancel-lorsville? Chancel-lorsville? And when the great review was held at Washington Wash-ington of Meade's and Sherman's armies, did not the foreigners who watched it declare that, all in all there was no other such terrible fighting force in all the world's armies? Take the colts that have been racing here daily of late, and that were here last year. Could any but thoroughbreds hold up to the work? Would not their preliminary training break down any other breed of horses? - Thad Stephens of California was taken from a band and broken. He was essentially good nat-ured nat-ured and lazy. The wife of his owner for some months drove him in a buggy around San Francisco. Fran-cisco. Finally his owner said to the trotting horse trainer, Dan Dennison, "That loafer has some fine points, take him over to the Oakland track and see if you can make a trotter of him." Dan took him, hitched him to a sulky, and to make him take on some speed, whipped him until the horse became angry, and ran away. He ran four times around that mile track before Dan could control him at all. When finally stopped Dennison swung down from the sulky, and, rubbing his benumbed arms, said: "I am through training that horse to trot, but if he cannot outrun any horse on earth I'm a piece of cneese." For years he beat all comers, his last great race being with True Blue and Joe Daniels. Thad had a full brother, brought up in the band. When but half broken to the saddle his rider gave him a blow of a whip, whereupon he ran off and continued to run for two solid hours, until his rider, a povorful man and great horseman, horse-man, was almost exhausted. In his first race he was so far in the lead that the crowd cheered lustily, at which the frightened horse jumped the fence, threw his rider and ran eight miles to his home. The wife of his owner seeing him, went out and called him. He came to her, she took off his trappings and warmly blanketed him and led him by the foretop to his stall. They are not only the highest bred horses in the world, but the most intelligent. As a rule the modern trotting horse is half or three-fourths thoroughbred. |