66 HORSES AND ROADS. 



as he could hold it in his hand ; ' this is virtually a 

 cold shoe. He did not believe in calks, or paring 

 the horn, but he let in his tips a la Charlier ; and, 

 finding that he could not get farriers to shoe as he 

 wanted, he started his own forge, on his own farm, 

 as he says 'for his own protection.^ He goes on to 

 say : ' When the mare I drive came to me she had a 

 frog the size of my little finger ; now it fills up 

 almost the whole of her foot. Nine hundred and 

 ninety-nine thousandths of all the trouble in horses' 

 feet come from shoeing : in fact, practically all. 

 Even in the case of heavy draught horses, put on 

 as little iron as you can get on : never a heel or a 

 toe calk. I have some heavy horses, and they go 

 with seven or eight ounces on their feet. The whole 

 secret is, if you have a horse whose feet have been 

 abused for a series of years, all that is required is a 

 little piece of iron at the toe. I am afraid I drive 

 very hard down hill. I am in the habit of driving 

 cripples ; my friends have a good deal to say about 

 the corpses that I drive ; hut I take care of their 

 feet, and they manage to do good work. I make my 

 best time in driving down hill. I have no fear of 

 hard roads, and no fear of pavements, if a horse's 

 foot is kept in proper condition. Last winter I rode 

 my saddle mare (and, of course, my neck is more to 

 me than anything else I own) on glare ice, with a 

 small bit of iron' — inlaid, as before explained — 

 ' four inches long, curled around her toe, and with a 

 very small toe calk. I galloped out on the ice 

 where the men were cutting the ice, and I had no 



