164 HORSES AND ROADS. 



There are farmers who breed hunters and who 

 ride their young horses to hounds, as a matter either 

 of business or of pleasure. If they would try them 

 unshod, they might be agreeably surprised at the 

 result. Setting aside their superior performance, 

 they would find, when they came to sell them, that 

 the veterinary surgeon would always pass them as 

 free from all suspicion of brittle hoof, sandcrack, 

 seedy toe, thrushes, corns, pumice-foot, cutting or 

 brushing, or navicular disease. No unshod horse 

 ever suffers from any of these diseases or defects, 

 no matter how hard his work or over what ground. 

 This much is allowed, as we have seen, by veterinary 

 surgeons. But besides these certain advantages, 

 there are others. For instance, spavins, splints, 

 ring-bones, side-bones, wind-galls, ' swollen ' legs and 

 ' filled ' legs (which are different), quittor, curbs, 

 stringhalt, overreach, bad action, thickened tendons, 

 and stumbling, are all to be found with singularly 

 less frequency in the unshod horse than in the shod 

 one. The same remark applies also to those occult 

 infirmities and defects of which mention has already 

 been made, many of which constitute unsoundness 

 by law. 



