AS TO SOUNDNESS. 69 



over the regular time, and then when he has a tendency 

 to have long toes, the strain upon his back tendons for 

 some time before he is re- shod is very great. In all 

 cases you will do well to bear this in mind in examining 

 the back of the leg from the knee downwards, when you 

 either find long toes or see that the toes have a tendency 

 to become long. 



We now come to the third division of our classification, 

 namely, ano7nalies of position. 



Upright pasterns, as a general thing, are short as well, 

 but I have already pointed out that they may be long 

 and upright. With short upright pasterns the line of 

 weight passes through the foot {see Fig. 2, ^). The jar 

 in such cases is so great that the foot is extremely likely 

 to be the seat of grave malformation or disease. We 

 frequently have shaky thickened fetlock joints. The 

 stilty crambling gait of such horses is highly jarring 

 and disagreeable to the rider, and renders the horse 

 liable to fall. Such are highly unsafe for riding or for 

 driving in two-wheeled vehicles. When the weight comes 

 through the foot we look for corns, sandcrack, boxy 

 heels, withered frogs, and thrush. We may not have 

 all these, but some of them are sure to be present. More 

 difficult cases for us are those where the weight does not 

 pass through the foot, but very nearly so. A horse 

 perhaps that is growing old is brought to us. We find 

 that he is sound, but the pasterns are growing year by 

 year more upright. We cannot reject such a case, 

 although we may feel certain that in another year he 



