REAR WELL AND RACE WELL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2375, 7 September 1899, Page 35

REAR WELL AND RACE WELL.

It is always much pleasanter to pay a compliment than to write reproaches, but, at tha risk of being considered disagreeable. I am going to say what I believe to be the truth, and that is that our breeding and racing arrangements are not always well thought out. The rule of thumb is too much relied on. A certain horse did well on such and such treatment, and every horse that comes into tha stable thenceforth is put through the same mill m the same way. -This is perhaps not so much the case here as in England, where breeders and owners are cased up in tradition and precedent ; still, the same principle is to some extent in evidence, and I want to quote what Mr Allison says on one matter, not because the particular point which he is trj'ing to make needs peculiar attention in New Zealand, but because what he says illustrates aptly the great need there is for abandoning set forms of practice in favour of a system by which the individualities of a horse can be brought out and put to use. "That we in England have better grass than any to be found in California is certain, but, on the other hand, how many of our yearlings have had the free scope for exercise and fresh air that falls to the lot of those bred at the Rancho del Paso and other American studs? Certainly Mr Haggin's youngsters as a lot beat ours for legs and feet, and I do not think many of ours would have stood such a journey and landed in anything like such, shape. Take the pick of the Doncaster sale yearlings and send them to California— what would they be like when they got there? It is very clear that the method of rearing stock has far more to do with the general Welfare of the breed than has the method of training and racing them. We are apt here to imagine that early racing and short distances are at the root of all evils in our horseflesh,but we see these robust, hardy yearlings from America, and have to face at the same time the fact that there iB considerably less longdistance racing in America than there is here, while yearlings are regularly tried in the summer, and even in the spring, and it is a common practice to run horses very much more frequently than we do here. Often enough they run horses 40 or l>o times in a year, and even their highest class ones, such as Hano"cr was, are taxed in a manner we should hardly dream of. Hanover in his three-year-old w»ason, when I saw him, ran 27 times, wini.ng 20 races. It s.eems clear, then, that as tho Americans hiive maintained constitution, limbs, and soundness in the face of this of treatment, it is in the rearing of thr-ir stock that they can teach us something, while we, on our pait, will not make our horses better by running them over long distances-, unless we rear them in such a manner as to fit them for this or any other trial."