Some say there is nothing under the sun perfect. Foals developing in the womb of their dam sometimes will be in a cramped position, which contracts those muscles or ligaments that cause winging in or paddling out. As some of the yearlings and weanlings show this faulty line of action before ever being shod. I have seen yearlings that were knee-knockers to begin with and you would think confirmed ones and after one, two or three shoeings you could not hear them knock their boots on the turns, and they would later develop into fast trotters and win races or take fast records at two and three years old.
At the Allen Farm, where I have been located for a great many years, I have seen results obtained by foot fixing and shoeing that satisfied me that there were secrets hidden from most of the public in the art or science of foot fixing and balancing faulty action, and from my experience and the results obtained, I felt that the public was entitled to my knowledge so gained. I have seen yearlings step eighths of a mile from 15¾ to 17 and 18 seconds, and many of them. I have seen a yearling step the last sixteenth of an eighth in seven seconds, a 1:52 gait, on this half-mile track which should go a second faster on a mile track.
Now if the foot fixing and shoeing that I have explained in this book and have been practising for years is not the nearest approach to the proper and correct way of balancing the action of the trotter and pacer, why has Bingara become the champion fourteen-year-old sire of 2:30 performers, located as he is in this cold climate and far away from the section where are the greatest number of producing dams? Mares by Kremlin 2:07¾, the champion living brood mare sire of the world, have produced wonderful results. Through these channels came Baden 2:05¼, a trotting race horse that raced on both half-mile tracks and mile tracks and was badly handicapped in many of his races by being scored ten, twelve, fifteen, and as many as seventeen times before getting the word. This scoring was not all done by one driver or one horse, but by different drivers and different horses trying to break the horse’s heart repeatedly, and when they could not rupture his legs, unhinge his back, rattle his thinking box or break his heart, Mr. Geers and Mr. Cox, the great race drivers, said that Baden 2:05¼ was the greatest race horse ever seen. In all my experience with the produce of Bingara I have never seen one yet that wanted to pace if looked after in his early education. I know him to get trotters from pacing mares, and nothing but trotters from all kinds of mares, his power to transmit the trotting gait to his produce is something wonderful, and his only pacers are those that were forced by the unsportsmanlike use of hopples.