316 THE HORSE. 



CALKINS. 



It is expedient not only that the foot and ground surface of the shoe 

 should be most accurately level, but that the crust should be exactly smoothed 

 and fitted to the shoe. Much skill and time are necessary to do this 

 perfectly with the drawing knife. The smith has adopted a method of 

 more quickly and more accurately adapting the shoe to the foot. He pares 

 the crust as level as he can, and then he takes the shoe, at a heat some- 

 thing below a red heat, and applies it to the foot, and detects any little 

 elevations by the deeper colour of the burned horn. This practice has been 

 much inveighed against ; but it is the abuse and not the use of the thing 

 which is to be condemned. If the shoe be not too hot, nor held too long 

 on the foot, an accuracy of adjustment is thus obtained, which the knife 

 Avould be long in producing, or would not produce at all, If, however, 

 the shoe is made to burn its way to its seat with little or no previous pre- 

 paration of the foot, the heat must be injurious both to the sensible and 

 insensible parts of the foot. 



The heels of the shoe should be examined as to their proper width. 

 Whatever be the custom of shoeing the horses of dealers, and the too pre- 

 valent practice in the metropolis, of giving the foot an open appearance, 

 although the back part of it is thereby exposed to injury, nothing is more 

 certain, than that in the horse for work, the heels, and particularly the 

 seat of corn, can scarcely be too well covered. Part of the shoe projecting 

 outwaixl can be of no possible good, but rather an occasional source of 

 mischief, and especially in a heavy country. A shoe, the web of which 

 projects inward as far as it can, without touching the frog, affords protec- 

 tion to the angle between the bars and the crust. 



Of the manner of attaching the shoe to the foot the owner can scarcely 

 be a competent judge; he can only take care that the shoe itself shall not 

 be heavier than the work requires — that for work a little hard the shoe 

 shall still be light, with a bit of steel welded into the toe — that the nails 

 shall be as small, and as few, and as far from the heels, as maybe con- 

 sistent with the security of the shoe ; and that, for light work at least, the 

 shoe shall not be driven on so closely and firmly as is often done, nor the 

 points of the nails be brought out so high up as is generally practised. 



There are few cases in which the use of calkins (a turning up and elevation 

 of the heel) can be admissible in the fore-feet, except in frosty weather, to 

 prevent the slipping of the feet. If, however, calkins are used, let them be 

 placed on both feet. If the outer heel only be raised with the calkin, as is 

 too often the case, the weight cannot be thrown evenly on the foot, and 

 undue straining and injury of some part of the foot or of the leg must be the 

 necessary consequences. Few things deserve more the attention of the 

 horseman than this most absurd and injurious of all the practices^of the 

 forge One cpiarter of an hour's walking, with one side of the shoe or boot 

 raised considerably above the other, will painfully convince us of what the 

 horse must sutler from this too common method of shoeing. We cannot 

 excuse it even in the hunting shoe. If the horse be ridden far to cover, or 

 galloped over much hard and flinty ground, he will inevitably suffer from- this 

 unequal distribution of the weight. If the calkin be put on the outer heel 

 to prevent the horse from slipping, either the horn of that heel should be 

 lowered to a corresponding degree, or the other heel of the shoe should be 

 raised to the same level by a gradual thickening. Of the use of calkins in 

 the hinder foot, we shall presently speak. 



