In England the Thoroughbred is thought to be the ideal saddle-horse. I confess that I have had the Thoroughbred fever pretty badly. But that was a long time ago; and maybe that fever was contemporaneous with Anglo-mania; indeed, the former may have been due to the latter. Personal preferences, however, have properly little weight in a judicial inquiry. My whole effort in this book has been to be entirely fair. Personally, I care for a very few gaits in a saddle-horse. I am quite content with the walk, the trot and the gallop. The Thoroughbred does all of these with, to say the least, a reasonable satisfaction. But it is unquestionably true that a well-formed, well-trained, well-bred Denmark will go all three of these gaits with better style and more finish than any Thoroughbred. Besides, he can readily be taught the amble or pace, the running-walk, or fox-trot, and the rack or single foot. That some do not care for these gaits is not in the least a reproach upon the capacity of the horse that can do them at the bidding of the rider. Moreover, this multiplicity of gaits does not in the least detract from the complete finish of each and all. This fact has become so apparent that there is a kind of hostility between New York and South and Western horse-show standards as to what a saddle-horse shall be like. A thoroughly gaited horse, trained in all the paces, would look absurd in the eyes of those who like such horses if he were shorn of his tail. It is considered by many who care only for the three gaits that a saddle-horse must have a docked tail. A few years ago a man with a thoroughly gaited horse could show him, long tail and all, in the Southern and Western circuit, and then bring him to New York and Philadelphia where he would tie up the horse’s tail and only exhibit the walk, trot and gallop. Now, this still may be permissible; but, if not absolutely denied, it is sternly frowned upon. So really the question has become the highly absurd one of tail or no tail. It is about as absurd as to deny the place to an applicant for a position where knowledge of French was required because he also knew Italian and Spanish. The breeders and trainers of Denmarks are too practical, however, to shed tears over such foolishness. They breed their horses the same as before, but they train this one for the East and that one for the West and South. The quality tells wherever they go, and a horse in any section that takes a blue ribbon away from a Denmark is more than lucky, he is almost unique.