THE horse's rescue. 115 



handle their feet. They have but little knee action. 

 They drag one foot over the other. If they are har- 

 ried, they will be likely to tread on their own feet, and 

 on each other's. The near horse sags back on making 

 this circle ; the off horse swings his hind parts out 

 against the trace. 



There are all degrees of this awkwardness, accord- 

 to the change. This pair are not very bad yet. They 

 were sold, I heard, for one thousand dollars, to a gen- 

 tleman in Bath, Steuben bounty, K Y., though the 

 story IS not to be relied on ; but it can be done any 

 day, and is every day, all over the world. Horses are 

 sold and bought, and large prices paid for them, in all 

 stages of change from natural, and ofttimes they are 

 in the last stages. It does not seem to affect the sale 

 or price, for this reason : the people are ignorant of 

 the horse, and the position he is in. I could have 

 balanced them better than they were if I could have 

 shod them in my shop, by dressing their feet,, making 

 the levers on the toes of equal length, shoeing them 

 all around at the same time, having the hind feet in 

 pairs, and the fore feet the same, and work to one- 

 sixteenth of an inch both on shoe and foot, eye always 

 on run-over feet. I could keep them from showing 

 their defects by limping, for they limped equally on 

 all their feet. I have balanced thousands of these 

 poor horses between contraction and leverage and run- 

 over feet in forty-one years, and while I am experi- 

 menting nights I am doing all I can at this hard busi- 

 ness daily to get money to keep my horses, which I 

 have no use for only to see if I can find out what ails 

 all of these poor cripples. My close and careful work 



