116 The Management and Treatment of the Horse, 



High caulkings, and indeed caulkings of any kind, 

 are a curse to the horse, and until a class is opened for 

 instructing the blacksmith in the fundamental principles 

 of the foot, the absurd, foolish, and ridiculous system of 

 shoeing will not improve. The old smiths will tell us 

 that they have shod horses upon that principle all their 

 lives, and their fathers did so before them, so they must 

 know ; and they instil this doctrine into their ap- 

 prentices, and after they have served their time they in 

 their turn become as pig-headed as their teacher, and 

 strongly opposed to any alteration of the system. The 

 man who dares to assert that there can and ought to be 

 improvements made is considered a raving lunatic. The 

 treatment I have always adopted in sandcrack is that 

 which was recommended to me by Mr. Broad, of Bath, 

 and his brother in London. If my patient is lame I im- 

 mediately put on a bar-shoe. A bar-shoe is a round 

 shoe, not a common shoe made of bar-iron, fitted full at 

 the toe with a clip on each side, but having no bearing 

 opposite the crack. The shoe is fitted long, and made 

 thin at the heel, the object being to enable the horse to 

 bear his weight on the heels, which he can do better in 

 this shaped shoe than any other, or indeed even without 

 a shoe, at the same time applying plenty of cold water to 

 the coronet. Nothing will make the horn grow so fast 

 as plenty of cold water. Some people order poultices, 

 but they are difficult to keep on; holes are sure to wear 

 through the bag, the poultice falls through, and the loot 

 becoming dry, they do more harm than good. Give 

 physic, and in nine cases out of ten the patient in a few 

 days is free from lameness. I then adopt a practice 



