The following is my adaption of one of Aesop’s fables:
A horse trainer took the utmost pains with his charger. As long as the Spring carnival lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all races and fed him carefully with hay and corn. But when the carnival was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat and made him carry heavy loads of wood, subjecting him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment. The next racing carnival was again proclaimed, however, and when the trumpet summoned him to his standard, the Trainer put on his charger its racing trappings, and mounted, being clad in his heavy coat of pride. The Horse fell down straightway under the weight, no longer equal to the burden, and said to his master, ‘You must now race on foot, for you have transformed me from a Horse into an Ass; and how can you expect that I can again turn in a moment from an Ass to a Horse?’
So the moral of the story is this: fair weather friends wither. May the best horse win today and forever be fed hay and corn!