532 



can not work unshod ; but these are exceptional cases. Then, again, in 

 winter, when the usual snowfall is wanting, most horses' feet will re- 

 quire protection ; but nowadays an owner has himself to blame if ho 

 submits to having the work done in that wrong-headed and ridiculous 

 manner, which has called into existence such a long and dismal cate- 

 gory of disease and misery'. 



The horse's foot is, after all, a good deal of what we make it, and if our 

 horses, from their colthood up. had their feet more carefully attended 

 to, and especially were they invariably to stand while in confinement 

 on some material less deleterious to the hoof than dry wooden flooring, 

 from which the foot suffers no attrition whatsoever, and by which it is 

 moreover depleted of its natural moisture, their feet would, in the period 

 of the animals' active usefulness, be found to be better shaped, harder, 

 less brittle, and in every way better suited for the work required of 

 them. 



In the East Indies, where pony racing is very popular and the purses 

 exceedingly valuable, many expedients are resorted to to smuggle a pony 

 that is over height under the 13.2 standard (the maximum height for 

 ponies) among them, of course cutting down the feet as far as can be done 

 with impunity. I frequently observed that those of the handsome little 

 Arabs and Walers (Australians), which came up oftenest for measure- 

 ment, and whose feet were in consequence most frequently pared down 

 (albeit by an artist at the business, as these little animals were too valu- 

 able for their owners to accept any risk of injury) were those whose feet 

 subseq uently stood best the try in g ordeal of trainin g and racing on the ada- 

 mantine going of the tropics. The moral of this is obvious. It might 

 even be possible (I do not mean necessarily in this particular way) in the 

 course of generations to develop a horse whose feet should be so improved 

 that he could do all sorts of work on all sorts of going barefoot with im- 

 punity ; but this would imply an amount of self-sacrifice in the present 

 for the benefit of remote j)rosperity which is hardly to be looked for 

 in this practical age, and the contention of enthusiasts that all horses 

 could and should, under all circumstances, go unshod is, I fear, Utopian 

 and impractical, 



I have endeavored to show that shoeing, as generally, or at all events 

 very frequently, practiced is a fruitful source of injury to our horses' 

 feet; but as we can not altogether dispense with the custom, let us turn 

 to a consideration of the means which lie in our power of minimizing 

 the attendant evil as much as i^ossible. 



There is one instrument which I should like to see, if possible, omitted 

 from the shoeing outfit of every larrier, and that is the drawing-knife. 

 If our blacksmiths would use their knives less and their heads more in 

 the execution of their very important and by no means eas}' duty, our 

 horses would be the better for it, and so would their owners. There is 

 no great mystery surrounding the subject, and the application of ordi- 

 nary common sense, in lieu of the barbarous routine which has been so 



