LOU DILLON (STANDARD-BRED TROTTER)
Owned by J. G. K. Billings. First horse to trot a mile in less than two minutes
This table shows that three minutes was reduced in forty-one years to two minutes and twenty seconds—that is in that time forty seconds were lopped off the record. It took forty-four years to take off the next twenty seconds. In the meantime the bicycle, ball-bearing sulky had been invented, and the last half of this twenty seconds were cut off when this weightless and frictionless vehicle was used. The Standard Bred Trotter had also been created. My idea is that the Dutchman, Henry Clay, and Lady Suffolk could either of them gone a mile in from ten to fifteen seconds faster than they did under modern conditions of training, driving, shoeing and harnessing and hitched to the modern vehicle. These experiments have all been very interesting, but I believe the same results might have been achieved at a very much less cost and loss—indeed, with a profit.
Exceeding high prices for trotting-horses have been very injurious to the horse-breeding industry. Whenever a trotting-horse brings twenty, forty or a hundred thousand dollars it sets the breeders, even the small ones wild with a desire to breed a colt that will bring such a price. Mr. Bonner began this with his purchase of Dexter, and followed it up by buying many others at very high figures, including Maud S. and Sunol. He doubtless found this an excellent advertisement for himself and his paper, but it was a bad thing for the horses of the country. The purchase of Axtell at $105,000 and Arion at $125,000 was even more demoralizing. No trotting-horse was ever worth that much and none probably ever will be. However, it is an excellent thing for very rich men to breed horses. They can afford to make experiments, and if their experiments are successful the men of moderate means can imitate them and succeed also. But this trotting horse breeding business is a rich man’s divertisement just as yachting is. The men who breed for profit should confine themselves to types which are reproducing, to types which come true more frequently than they prove false.
I firmly believe that if these trotters are ever made a consistently reproducing type, it will be by constant infusions of a mixture of trotting blood—Morgan or Clay—with that of the Thoroughbred. The first cross will probably not produce it, but if the mares of such unions be bred back to stallions of the blood mentioned, the result ought to be more satisfactory in the way of making a type, even though the experiments may not result in phenomenal speed; but there is no reason why there should not be a satisfactory percentage of phenomenal speed as well.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN
Henry Clay was one of the greatest horses that ever lived in this country. He was very fast, very strong and as game as it was possible for a horse to be. He founded a distinguished family, and from that family Mr. Randolph Huntington, of Fleetwood Farm, Oyster Bay, Long Island, by crossing Clay mares with Arab and Barb stallions, has created a type of as splendid horses as ever touched the earth. And it is a great pity that the United States Government has not long ago taken over all of Mr. Huntington’s horses, so as to perpetuate this new and useful type into a great national horse. On the sire’s side Henry Clay was a closely inbred Messenger. He was by Andrew Jackson, the greatest trotting horse of his day, and absolutely unbeaten during all his long career. Andrew Jackson was by Young Bashaw, and his dam was by Why Not, by imported Messenger, the grandam also being by imported Messenger. Young Bashaw was by the imported Arabian Grand Bashaw, the dam being Pearl by First Consul (Arab bred) out of Fancy by imported Messenger out of a daughter of Rockingham. Henry Clay’s dam was the famous mare, Lady Surrey. She was bred in the neighbourhood of Quebec, Ontario, and was brought with twelve other horses into New York. With her mate, “Croppy,” she was sold to one of the Wisner family in Goshen, New York. The class to which Lady Surrey belonged was then called Kanucks, though some called them “Pile Drivers,” because of their high-knee action. Records of breeding were not kept in Quebec, but all the external evidence points to an Oriental origin of the horses that were taken there from France. But the strong admixture of Arab and Barb blood in Henry Clay is evident from the recorded part of his pedigree and disregarding the blood of his dam.
CLAY-KISMET (CLAY-ARABIAN)
Bred by Randolph Huntington
Henry Clay was foaled in 1837, and lived until 1867. He was bred by Mr. George M. Patchen, of New Jersey, and afterwards passed into the hands of Gen. William Wadsworth, of Geneseo, New York. Probably, if he had remained the property of Patchen, he would have had a better chance as a sire, for there were times during the Wadsworth ownership, when this horse suffered alternately from neglect and abuse. When General Wadsworth wanted to buy the colt, he asked Mr. Patchen to put a price on him. Mr. Patchen, not anxious to sell, finally put on a price which he thought prohibitive. “We will give the horse all the water he can drink,” he said to General Wadsworth, “and then weigh him, and you may give me one dollar a pound for him.” General Wadsworth promptly accepted, and the horse weighing 1050 pounds, that fixed the price, which was paid immediately, and the horse was sent at once to Livingston County, New York.