the foot after the shoe has been nailed on, the contracted 

 quarter will be expanded oyer a quarter of an inch before 

 the shoe is clinched up. Nails should not be used back 

 towards the heels of a contracted foot that is to be ex- 

 panded. When the foot expands wider than the shoe, reset 

 shoes and renew the position of expander to act stronger. 

 The softer you keep the feet the faster they will spread, do 

 not let them get dry and hard. The expansion you get in 

 the foot of a yearling or a two or three-year-old can be 

 kept after the expander has been discarded by not allowing 

 the heels to be kept too high for too long a time. But in 

 aged horses that have had contracted feet or quarters for 

 years and have become set, you can expand the feet or 

 quarters, and when you stop using the expanders the heels 

 and quarters will contract right back to where they were 

 before, in the majority of cases. In cases of this kind in 

 aged horses after the feet have been expanded the quarters 

 should be cut down low and the coronets blistered on both 

 inside and outside quarters. 



There are lots of horses with contracted heels and the 

 heels become so high from the coronet to the shoe bearing 

 surface and have stayed this way for such a length of time 

 that they cannot be cut down without hurting or injuring 

 the horse, until after the feet have been expanded. The 

 sensitive part of the foot gets a long ways down from the 

 coronet in a contracted foot, and to cut or lower the quar- 

 ters and heels to place the foot at a proper angle, it cannot 

 be done until the foot is expanded. The more you expand 

 the foot the lower you can cut or rasp down the heels. The 

 more you expand the heels the higher up you are driving 

 the sensitive interior of the foot at the quarters. In many 

 aged horses after the feet are expanded it will be well to 

 continue the use of expanders, to prevent contraction, for 

 a period of six or twelve months. 



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