CONTRACTED HEELS, OR HOOF-BOUND. 403 



after shoeing unless the injury is at the toe, when the first evidence of 

 the trouble may be the discharge of pus at the coronet. When lameness 

 follows close upon the setting of the shoes, without other appreciable 

 cause, each nail should be lightly struck with a hammer, when the 

 one at fault will be detected by the flinching of the animal. 



Treatment consists in drawing the nail, and if the soft tissues have 

 been penetrated or suppuration has commenced, the horn must be 

 pared away until the diseased parts are exposed. The foot is now to 

 be poulticed for a day or two, or until the lameness and suppuration 

 have ceased. If the discharge of pus from the coronet is the first evi- 

 dence of the disease, the offending nail must be found and removed, 

 the horn pared out, and creolin or a weak solution of carbolic acid 

 injected at the coronet until the fistulous tract has healed. , 



CONTRACTED HEELS, OR HOOF-BOUND. 



Contracted heels, or hoof-bound, is a common disease among horses 

 kept on hard floors in dry stables, and in such as are subject to much 

 saddle work. It consists in an atrophy, or shrinking, of the tissues of 

 the foot, whereby the lateral diameter of the heels is diminished. It 

 affects the fore feet principally ; but it is seen occasionally in the hind 

 feet, where it is of less importance for the reason that the hind foot 

 first strikes the ground with the toe, and, consequently, less expan- 

 sion of the heels is necessary than in the fore feet, where the weight 

 is first received on the heels. Any interference with the expansibility 

 of this part of the foot interferes with locomotion and ultimately 

 gives rise to lameness. Usually but one foot is affected at a time ; but 

 when both are diseased the change is greater in one than in the other. 

 Occasionally but one heel, and that the inner one, is contracted; in 

 these cases there is less likely to be lameness and permanent impair- 

 ment of the animal's usefulness. According to the opinion of some 

 of the French veterinarians, hoof-bound should be divided into two 

 classes — total contraction^ where the whole foot is shrunken in size; 

 and contraction of the heels^ when the trouble extends only from the 

 quarters backward. (Plate XXXIV, figs. 4 and 7.) 



Causes. — Animals raised in wet or marshy districts, when taken to 

 towns and kept on dry floors, are liable to have contracted heels, not 

 alone because the horn becomes dry, but because fever of the feet and 

 wasting away of the soft tissues result from the change. Another 

 common cause of contracted heels is to be found in faulty shoeing, 

 such as rasping the wall, cutting away the frog, heels, and bars ; high 

 calks and the use of nails too near the heels. Contracted heels may 

 happen as one of the results of other diseases of the foot ; for instance, 

 it often accompanies thrush, sidebones, ringbones, canker, navicular 

 • disease, corns, sprains of the flexor tendons, of the sesamoid and sus- 

 pensory ligaments, and from excessive knuckling of the fetlock joints. 



