Or who may seem to win,
You know that you must love at last!—
Why not begin?
THOROUGHBREDS AND TROTTERS AS SADDLE-HORSES
Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll
EVER since the employment of an English judge of saddle-horses at the New York Horse Show, a few years ago, a lively discussion has been going on between the advocates of thoroughbreds and of our American saddle-horse, which is for the most part trotting-bred, upon the subject of their respective merits as saddle-horses. The English judge had of course an Englishman’s preference for a thoroughbred. He has shown this in his awards, and he has established a class of thoroughbreds under saddle. His view has naturally not found favor with the friends of the American saddle-horse, an animal usually a cross between the trotter and the Kentucky saddle-horse, which is a registered family, and is itself largely of trotting ancestry. The discussion, however, has not been confined to the merits of these two animals as saddle-horses, but has covered the whole subject of their respective characteristics.
Against the thoroughbred it is charged that he is unsound, wanting in stamina, flighty and excitable, and has not the trotting action to make a comfortable hack under the saddle or to become a good harness-horse, and even that he is inferior to some other horses in style and beauty. There is a certain truth in these accusations; but they contain also a great deal of untruth.
It is not possible to say that there is a want of stamina in a family of horses to which belong all runners, virtually all steeplechasers, and from which are directly descended all hunters and nearly all cavalry horses. Nearly all steeplechasers are thoroughbreds, and these horses do their four miles like old-fashioned runners, besides going over the exhausting jumps. And how can blood be said to want stamina which is the basis of the blood of all the cavalry horses in Europe? In 1870 the German cavalry horses of this breeding could do their thirty-five miles a day for three months during the roughest winter weather. And taking it nearer home, do any horses surpass in toughness the half-bred horses of Canada and tide-water Virginia? The old Virginians say that Kentucky can show a better head and tail than can be found in Virginia, but that for everything between Virginia is better, and the assertion is not without a color of truth. My observation is that, as a rule, trotting and saddle-bred horses have not the stamina of the best horses descended from the thoroughbred.
When we come to speak of gaits under the saddle, it will of course be admitted that thoroughbreds can walk, canter, and gallop. Their deficiency is in the trot. Most thoroughbreds do not show good hock action. They do not give one that definite rise and fall which one should have when riding at a trot. But there are thoroughbreds that have good hock action. Where, for instance, can one find better hock action than in the thoroughbred mare Jasmine, which has lately been seen about New York? There are many thoroughbreds with such a trot.