376 EXAMINATION OF HORSES AS TO SOUNDNESS 



tiou more particularly seen in our thoroughbreds. This is very frequently 

 congenital and hereditary, in which case a slight forward inclination is of 

 no importance, and we have known horses whose knees were very much 

 ilexed to pass through a life of hard work without displaying the slightest 

 inconvenience from them. 



But this defect is very frequently acquired by accident or hard work. 

 It may be that no very obvious changes in the textures of the leg are to 

 be found, but with the majority it is otherwise. Bursal enlargements, 

 sprains and contractions of tendons and ligaments behind the limb, bony 

 enlargements behind and below the knee, are the most common among the 

 causes of this defect, and all of them constitute unsoundness. 



EXAMINATION OF THE LEGS AND FEET 



We have now reached a stage where it becomes necessary to subject the 

 legs to careful manipulation in search of defects which may not hitherto 

 have been patent. 



Capped elbow (Vol. II, p. 359) will, of course, be perceptible at a 

 glance. It is of varying importance. Sometimes, when of recent forma- 

 tion, and attended with inflammation and lameness, it would constitute 

 unsoundness, but after the inflammatory action has subsided it becomes 

 merely an eye-sore, unless of course it is large and specially liable to 

 injury from the cause which produced it. Before proceeding down the 

 limb the finger should be directed to the seat of median neurectomy 

 (p. 1G5 of this volume), when evidence of the kind referred to in connec- 

 tion with other neurectomies may be discovered (see Fetlock, jj. 377). 



As we pass down the leg we may meet with sprain or rheumatism 

 affecting the muscles of the arm, and the only evidence of it then present 

 may be a tenderness to pressure along their course witli more or less lame- 

 ness. The writer has in mind the case of a horse which he knew went 

 sound on one day, and was quite lame from this cause on the next. 



The Knee. — Passing on to the knee, we first survey the front and feel 

 for any enlargement of the surface, or for a nodule beneath the skin not 

 uncommon in hunters from an embedded thorn ; the hair should be raised 

 in order to expose any scar, the result of a former broken knee. Scars 

 here do not render a horse unsound, unless the cause which jjroduced them 

 has also affected the joints or structures about it in such manner as to 

 interfere with the animal's action and usefulness. 



The Canon. — Carrying the hand down the front of the canon, one 

 not unfrequently finds here in young thoroughbreds soreness, with bony 

 deposit (sore shins), which is distinctly an unsoundness. 



