Horseshoeing. 'ill. 



of his pursuits, he cannot possibly do without them, and a lame 

 one is a very serious and expensive incumbrance to him. 



My object, therefore, shall be to show him and others how 

 they mav insure to themselves a much larger amount of good and 

 efficient service from their horses than has hitherto been obtained 

 from them, at the small cost of a little attention to the mode in 

 which they are shod, and the general treatment of their feet in 

 the stable. It is too much the habit to consider that shoeing 

 has accomplished all that can be expected of it, if the shoes are 

 only firm on the horse's feet when his master requires his services ; 

 whether they are tight and pinch him, or are easy and comfort- 

 able to him, are matters that are seldom considered, so long as 

 he can go at all, and contrive to keep himself on his legs, and 

 not diminish his marketable value by tumbling down and breaking 

 his knees ; all the pain he endures passes unheeded, except by 

 the poor brute himself, and until he becomes positively lame 

 and useless he receives no sympathy or care from those whose 

 bounden duty it was by timely attention to have spared him. 

 " No foot no horse " is a truth that I doubt not has been 

 realized to many of my readers, when, in the expectation of an 

 agreeable ride either on business or pleasure, tliey have found 

 their horse emerge from tlie stable, marking time with his head 

 at every step with the precision of a drill-sergeant. 



The first thing that occurs to every one on such occasions is 

 to travel yesterday's journey over again in the mind's eye, in the 

 hope of discovering some particular hole in the road, or some 

 particular stone that must have caused the unlooked-for and 

 unexpected calamity ; the bare possibility of its being the 

 gradually developed result of long-continued bad shoeing, and 

 bad treatment in the stable, of course never suggests itself, 

 because the horse has always been treated as other horses are 

 treated, and therefore those things can have nothing whatever to 

 do with it; and this would be considered a sufficient and satis- 

 factory answer to any one Avho had the temerity to surmise such 

 a cause. I will nevertheless venture to assert, that in nine 

 hundred and ninety-nine cases of foot-lameness out of every 

 thousand, bad shoeing and bad stabling have had more to do 

 with it, than the supposed accident that causes the horse to " drop 

 his head to it," and thereby show that the culminating point 

 had at last been reached, and that he is indisputably lame. 



Foot-lameness is a very insidious affair, particularly that most 

 painful and common form of it, navicular lameness. It steals on 

 very gradually, and for the most part unobserved by all but the 

 unfortunate horse ; he, poor beast, notes its every stage, and if 

 those who look after him, and those who employ him, would 

 only attend to the indications he gives them, they would know 



