contracted feet, others to high heels and 

 straight pasterns, and still others to low heels 

 and long, sloping pasterns. The foot that 

 is most liable to contraction is the high- 

 heeled foot with the dark, heavy wall. There 

 is no good reason why it should be permit- 

 ted to narrow up and cause the horse to go 

 stiff and sore when he starts out, except that 

 his feet look so 2:ood and strono- to the un- 

 initiated that they will accept almost any other 

 excuse for his crippled condition before they 

 are forced to the conviction that the trouble 

 really is in his feet. Touching on this subject 

 some years ago in The Horse World, I said : 



''There is many a horse suft"ering night and 

 day, 24 hours out of the 24, and the owner, 

 driver, groom and shoer do not know it. It 

 requires but a small amount of neglect to cause 

 a horse's heels to begin to contract ; it does 

 not take but a slight contraction of the heels 

 to interfere with the articulation of the lateral 

 cartilages, thereby creating a slight inflamma- 

 tion that poulticing and soaking relieves tem- 

 porarily; but the cause of the irritation is still 

 there, and if the wall of the foot is thick and 

 heavy, that makes matters worse ; for a wall 

 of that nature is unyielding. And so matters 

 go on from a seemingly trivial soreness to a 

 shortened stride, and finallv comes the acute 

 lameness ; the sunken eyes tell all of the mis- 

 ery and suffering that a little enlightenment, a 

 little study 'of the horse's foot and leg, would 

 have prevented. 



*'What do I mean by a little study of the 

 horse's foot and leg? I'll tell you what I mean 



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