ILLUSTRATED GUIDE. 71 



worn away or broken down if the shoe had not kept the 

 hoof off the ground ; therefore, you had better always pare 

 it down. But on no account ever cut anything away 

 from the sides of the burs, nor what is called " open out 

 the heels"; be sure you never touch the frog with a 

 knife. Now, remember that there are three things which 

 you must never do in paring out a foot ; you must never 

 cut the sides of the burs, nor open out the heels, nor pare 

 the frog, and I will tell you why you must never do them. 

 The burs are placed where they are to keep the heels 

 from closing in upon the frog, and if you thin them by 

 cutting their sides you weaken them, and they can no 

 longer do it, and the foot begins to contract. Opening 

 out the heel does exactly the same thing, by weakenino- 

 the very parts which nature placed there to keep the heels 

 apart. It takes some time to conti-act a horse's foot so 

 much as to lame him, and because the contraction comes 

 on by slow degrees, no one notices it till the horse falls 

 lame and then every one wonders what can have done it ; 

 but very few hit upon the right cause. The frog is a 

 thick, spongy cushion, the chief use of which is to protect a 

 very important joint called the maricular joint, and it is cov- 

 ered by a thin layer of horn, which keeps in the moist- 

 ure ; and every time you slice off any of the frog, you lay 

 bare a part that was never meant to be exposed to the 

 air, and it dies, and cracks, and forms rays ; and if these 

 rays are cut off at every fresh shoeing, the whole frog be- 

 comes as dry and hard as a board, and the horse gets an 

 incurable disease called "mari(;ular disease," Therefore, 

 I say leave the frog alone; it will never grow too large, 

 for, long before that would happen, the outer covering will 

 shell off, and a new, horny covering will be found under- 



