My grandfather took me to the harness races when I was barely able to toddle. He called it "going to the trotters." He scorned the pacers and said the pacing gait looked ugly and artificial. He might have been right, but I still like betting on pacers better.

The main reason I prefer pacers over trotters is that pacers are so much less likely to break stride. When a horse does that - stops moving its legs the way they're supposed to move by loping or galloping or just running all-out - the driver has to pull it up and get it out of the way of the other horses until it goes back to trotting or pacing.

Pacers are more likely to be hobbled. This means that they have a harness that actually assists them in the gait and makes it harder for them to go off-stride. Trotters can have hobbles too, but many of them don't. And even if they do, they manage to break in spite of it.

Here's how to stop losing money on trotters. Before you even think about handicapping a trot, look at ALL of the horses in the race. If more than one or two of them break stride in more than half their races, pass on the race, even if the horse you like doesn't.

Why? Because when horses fumble their gait, they interfere with the other horses and cause confusion. They impede the horses beside them and can even cause an accident. Any trot that has more than a couple of horses that break stride in it is a race that is almost impossible to handicap.

Don't waste your money. Just watch the race and enjoy the beauty of the trotters and move on to the next race on the program.