Lastly, in writing of harness, it is proper to remind the horse owner that his harness like his horse improves by use and proper care after use. Therefore avoid having too much harness. Unless you are a constant exhibitor in the show ring, you can adapt your harnesses, if they are all made in the same general pattern as to pads, blinkers, terrets, brow-bands, and the like, to many uses.
A runabout harness of heavy make, with part of a double harness for your leader and a pair of long reins and a pair of traces and terrets that screw in and can be taken off, fit you out with a tandem harness. One heavy and one light set of double harness with similar arrangements as to reins and terrets will fit you out with a four-in-hand harness; and if you stick to about the same type of horse, with your saddlers in the lead and your harness horses in the wheel, you may have all the varieties of driving without undue expense and without an over-accumulation of harness.
CHAPTER X
THE AMERICAN HORSE
By far the most interesting type of horse to the American is the American trotting-horse, not only for the reason that he is of our own development, but because in one way or another he does duty for our harness horse, in practically every capacity except as a draught animal. He is known to horsemen the world over as the most docile and most versatile of horses. He has been developed and trained to go a mile in two minutes, and he has been trained to step high, and to prove himself to be in the highest class of harness horse, and he is not bad under saddle. Indeed, more than one blue-ribbon winner under the saddle from Virginia and Kentucky is of this same stock. This docility is shown in the wonderful performance of Belle Hamlin, Justina, and Globe, driven a mile, three abreast, in 2.14 by Ed. Geers.
In writing of the American trotting-horse one is confronted at the outset with the question of from what standpoint he is to be considered; whether as race-horse, road-horse, heavy harness horse, or general utility horse, as in all of these capacities he is without an equal, and almost without a competitor.
The American trotting-horse is the result of the development of a type produced from heterogeneous breeds; and while several districts of the country had their favorite strains of blood, there was no system of breeding which promised sure results until Hambletonian stamped his offspring with speed, and the instinct to trot; which have been developed by the breeding of horses with speed already developed or with speed inheritance. Trotters may now be bred, with a certainty that the produce will at least excel in speed horses of any other breed, and with a likelihood of great speed.