SHOEING 369 



SO that his legs remain sound ; and his weight saves him. 

 when he does have to do such work. His Hfe out of 

 doors or in open stables gives him fresh air at all times, 

 and his lungs remain good. lie has been kept under nat- 

 ural conditions for generations, and the result is a nat- 

 urally sound beast. He is shod with the Arabian plate. 

 In Syria the Frank shoe is very rarely seen. The plate 

 is the clumsiest device imaginable — thick, heavy, and 

 awkward. Except for a hole about an inch in diameter 

 in the centre, it covers the entire foot. The toe is curved 

 upward, and by wear grows more curved ; the heel like- 

 wise curves upward so as to cover the entire frog almost 

 up to the coronet. We like to see the foot rest flat on 

 the ground, and the frog, if not touching the ground, at 

 least close to it. The Syrian horse has the plate curved 

 upward at the back so that the frog, though resting on 

 the plate, is high off the ground, and the animal looks 

 as if he were treading on tiptoe. I at first mistook the 

 tiptoe step behind as an indication of spavin. We should 

 consider such shoeing as bad for the sinews. After the 

 shoe has been on six or eight weeks, the horse travels 

 very much as if his feet were balled with snow. He 

 is stepping on a sort of curved surface, and on less than 

 one -third of the face of the shoe at all times. It is 

 not a natural position for the foot. The hind toes are 

 generally worn off square. You may always assume the 

 foot to be good ; but you can see nothing of it except the 

 outside wall without taking off the plate. This horror 

 of a shoe the Arabian carries from four to six months! 

 To shoe a horse every month seems absurd enough to 

 a Bedouin. The shoe is held in place by six enormous 

 hand-made nails driven near together, three on either side, 

 about half-way back from the toe. The nails are driven 

 so that the clinches are in a group, so close that a quarter- 



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