36 OF SHOEING. 



shoehl when newly reshod, Mr. Hallen, late veterinary 

 surgeon of the Inniskilling Dragoons, took his first 

 ideas of turned-up shoes. Starting from this simple 

 and notorious fact, he carefully traced out its causes, 

 and was thereby enabled to throw much light on the 

 whole subject of shoeing. 



At first, to remedy the evil just spoken of, he 

 made the new shoes in shape exactly hke the old 

 ones ; improved going was the natural result. At 

 the next shoeing he followed up his advantage, and 

 made the new exactly like the then old shoes ; and 

 so on, each time with improved results. 



He did this at first only with horses that stumbled 

 or " toed," as horsemen say; he thought on the 

 subject, followed it up, watched the results care- 

 fully, and at last saw that nature intended a horse to 

 have a bearing on his whole foot, and not mainly on 

 his toe. He saw, too, not merely that the straight 

 toe caused the horse to trip and stumble in putting 

 down his foot ; but that it also produced an unna- 

 tural lever-like resistance against the ground, and 

 consequently an additional strain on the tendons 

 every time the foot was raised from the ground. 



After much consideration and various trials he 

 eventually shod all horses with the toes so turned up 

 that the wear at the end of the month should be 

 nearly even all over the foot. He rightly argued that 

 if stumbling horses were sensibly relieved by com- 

 plying with nature's requisitions, all horses would 



