A good groom should have been among horses from his boyhood. He should have learned his business under a senior. He should have all the regularity, sobriety, activity, and cleanliness of the thorough-bred coachman. In general, he is not such a solid character. He is somewhat flippant, talkative, fond of company, and much disposed to make medicinal experiments upon the horses.

Grooms are of two or three kinds. The word groom, though often applied to any man who looks after a horse, is most usually confined to a man who has been trained to groom and manage horses in the best style. Hence it does not belong to those who work in livery or coaching-stables. In a gentleman's stud the groom looks after the saddle-horses employed on the road or in the field. Where one is kept for the road and another for the field horses, the former is usually only the groom, the latter the hunting-groom. Those who superintend the management of racehorses, are termed train ers or training grooms.

The work of a groom is very variable. In some places he has the charge of only two horses, one for himself and one for his master, whom he accompanies on his rides. In others he has two horses and a gig; in some he has three horses, or two and a breeding mare with her foal. Two are considered full work, but three can be managed very well, two being out every day.

Untrained Grooms are those who diet, dress, and exercise the horses employed at ordinary work. They can not put horses into hunting condition, nor do they know how to maintain them in that condition. The thorough-bred groom is, or ought to be, able to do both. But it is not everybody who requires, or who can afford to keep, a thorough-bred groom. His wages are high, and he can always find employment from those who need his services. People who keep only two or three inferior horses, or perhaps only one, for pleasure or business, content themselves with an indifferent groom, one, it may be, who is partly employed about the warehouse, the garden, or the dwelling-house. The horse or horses can not, of course, be so well tended. They may be very well cleaned, but such men can not put the horses into hunting condition, nor maintain them in it, nor bestow all the care that hunters require after a day of severe exertion. For the horses kept by merchants about town, who seldom ride more than ten or twelve miles a-day at a gentle pace, nothing of this kind is required, and a groom who would make a sorry figure in the hunting stable may serve them perfectly well.

The man only requires some little dexterity in going about a horse, and a little experience of his habits in reference to food, drink, and work. These he may acquire without a long apprenticeship. He may obtain them in farm, livery, or posting stables. The thorough-bred groom can learn his business completely only under an experienced senior, who may have the charge of racing, hunting, or carriage horses.

In the racing-stables a boy is appointed to each horse, and these are superintended by the head-groom, or trainer, and his assistant, who is termed head-lad.