THE PRACTICAL HORSESHOER. 1J:3 



Suppose, then, that a horse havhig- a contracted foot is 

 Orouglit to a shop to be shod. Say that he is a work horse. 

 The owner, we will sa^^, is a poor man, who wants to work 

 him if he can walk at all. He cannot afford to have his 

 horse laid off for three or four weeks or more, and undergo 

 a regular course of veterinary treatment. Under these 

 circumstances, then, I would advise the following treat- 

 ment : 



Examine the foot well, and if the heels have grown high 

 and present a squeezed, tight-looking appearance, with the 

 entire surface of the sole and frog extremely hard and bone- 

 like, the first thing- 3'ou should do is to rasp or pare down 

 the heels and soles, so as to relieve the foot from this un- 

 natural iron- clad compressure, if I may use the expression. 

 Do not pare the sole too thin ; pare so that it will yield 

 under strong pressure from your thumbs. Open out the 

 heels in good shape, but do not pare between the frog and 

 the bars ; keep that part solid and strong, but loosen every 

 other part of the foot as much as you can without injury to 

 the sole. 



The practical shoer will understand the sort of paring I 

 mean better than any words of mine can convey to him. 

 Now, having the foot ready, you can prepare the shoe some- 

 what as follows : 



An3^ ordinary shoe will do, providing it has a moderately" 

 wide web ; keep the nails well forward in the shoe, so that 

 the foot will have every chance to spread. If it be a factory 

 shoe, probabl}^ you need not put any nails in the back holes, 

 particularly if the foot be short, which is seldom the case in 

 contraction. Bevel the shoe on the outside of both webs, 

 on the foot surface, commencing at a point about two inches 

 from the center of the toe, and gradually beveling otT to the 

 ends of the heels. Towards the heels the shoe shoidd have 

 a good sloping bevel. The accompanying illustration, 



