FITTING THE SHOE. 467 



frog about an inch or an inch and a quarter behind its point ; 

 and the only way to protect it is to keep the web of the shoe as 

 wide at the heels as it is at the toe, and to bring in the heels 

 until they nearly touch the frog. By so doing you lessen the 

 opening of the shoe, and the web of one side or the other will 

 strike upon the stones in the road and save the frog from corn- 

 ing with full force upon them. But open-heeled shoes leave 

 the frog entirely exposed to very large stones, and cause many 

 a bruise to the navicular joint, which lays the foundation of 

 future incurable lameness. 



I have often seen shoes so wide at the heels, that I have 

 placed my clenched hand within the opening of the shoe with- 

 out touching either side of it ; and where my fist could go a 

 stone as large could go. 



Another great advantage of bringing in the heels and fitting 

 the shoe close, is the certainty that the horse will not cast his 

 shoe ; you leave nothing for stiff ground to lay hold of, and, if 

 you slightly bevel the inside quarter and heel of the shoe from 

 the foot downwards, no ground in the world can pull it oif, for 

 the foot, expanding to the weight of the horse, enlarges the hole 

 made by the shoe, and leaves more space for the shoe to come 

 out of than it made for itself to go in at ; but if the shoe pro- 

 jects beyond the hoof at any ]3art, and more particularly at the 

 heels, the foot cannot fill the hole made by the shoe, and stiff 

 clay will cling round the projection and pull the shoe off. 



Having so far finished the shoe, j^lace it on the face of the 

 anvil with the toe hanging over the side, and see that the foot- 

 surface of the quarters and heels are quite level ; then make it 

 hot enough to scorch the hoof all round and form a bed for it- 

 self ; without this it would be next to impossible to ensure close 

 fitting ; for, after you have made the foot as level as you can 

 with the rasp, and the shoe as level as you can on the anvil, the 

 chances are very much against their fitting like two planed 

 boards, as they ought to do ; and the quantity of horn to be 

 thus removed is so small as not to be worth thinking about. It 

 is a mistake to suppose that a hot shoe injures the hoof; it does 

 nothing of the kind ; and you cannot possibly fit a shoe prop- 

 erly without making it hot. I would not have you burn a 

 shoe into its place on the foot, before you had taken care to 



