St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-08-14
TRAINING PIGS TO RACE.
A New Pastime on the Race Track
in California.

HI
San Francisco Newsletter.
Ever since Healy's pig Casey covered
himself with glory and renOwn by fight
ing the rattleSnake Mars. Michenfelder
has been thinking of raising breed OF
athletic porkers, whose feats of agility
and skill would be told and retold from
thu rising to the setting of the sun.
w tn this object in view he has been
securing the country far and wide and
advertising in most extensive manner
for hardy hogs, whose anatomy should
contain high percentage of muscle and
sinew and be practically devoid of fat.
He has now secured choice litter,
which promises we'll to come up to the
required standard, and every morning,
with the regularity of a good race horse
breeder, he takes the little chaps out to
train.
He begins in the early dawn by Civ
ing them stiff walk up to the reservoir
and back, and whenever one of the
youngsters gets to fresh or sulks on the
way he puts his little curly tail in
clothespins; and if there is any punish
menu that is more morally degrading
and hurtful to the amour propre of a
small pig than another, it is having the
spring taken out of his curly tail by
having the said tail weighted dOwns by
clothespinS.
After their walk he takes them back
to their yard and gives them cold
shower bath with garden hose. Then
they get light breakfast of weak swill,
after which they are given a half-hour's
rest for the purpose of facilitating digeS-
ton.
At 1880 the speed trials begin, and as
Michenfelder himself has too much bus
mess to attend to to personally superIn-
tend the matter, he has hit upon an in
genious labor-saving device whereby he
can make those pigs run like wildfre
without eXerting himself at all.
He just strolls down town with piece
of liver in his hand. and coaxes up
Healy's dog Jack and Black Peter from
the Pioneer, as we'll as Neff's Cy and
Pearce's three dogs and half a dozen
stray CANNES that have nothing in par
ticular to occupy their attention. These
he ''Sicks" on the pOrkers, and when the
dogs are "Sicked'' it is q comfort to
watch the pigs run.
The ''sicking" process lasts from
twenty to thirty-tive minutes, by which
time the athletes are swimming in their
own Precipitation, and the dogs are be-
ginning to be tagged out. They are per-
mitted to rest until noon, at which hour
Michenfelder rounds up a few more
uORS anu gives Ills pStS llOIt cxcTClSe.
By this process he has reduced his
herd to the narrow dimensions of fence
rails, but he has endo wed them with
speed heretofore unknown among
pUIkerS.
Healy has another string out of the
old Casey stock training in Oakland.
and Kofoed and Hanson are also starting
speeding styes.
There will be at least four good styes
of racing pigs owned in this city before
the fall, when it is proposed that pig
race track be opened here and purses
put up by an association for the en-
enlargement of the sport.
1t is more than likely that sports in
Colma, Redwood, San Mateo and ad-
joining districts will follow Michen-
felder's example and raise other strings
of racers.
II so. the fall meeting of the Pig
Racing association will assuredly BE- a
big success, and the popularity of the
sport will soon become wide spread.
One thing in favor of the new pastime
is its moderate expense when compared
with horse-racing or cOurSing with gray
hounds.
Pigs are cheap and easily handled,
and it costs less per annum to maintain
a firSt-class sly of crack running pigs
than it does to train the smallest string
of thlrd-rate plugs that ever appeared
at country fair horse race.