534 



exactitude liere renders whatever amount of care he may devote to the 

 completion of his work worse than useless. The very smallest devia- 

 tion from the perpendicular entails disastrous consequences not only 

 on the foot but on the entire limb. In the foot itself, when the weight 

 is borne unevenly, the lowest parts receive an undue share ; the pressure 

 retards the growth of new horn, and the foot in consequence becomes 

 weakened, distorted, and deformed. In the limb, deflected as it is by 

 an uneven basis, from the ground surface to its union with the trunk, 

 the angle of incidence of the weight is imposed unequally, and bone 

 and tendon mutually suffer from the strain. 



THE SHOE. 



The shoe should be as light as the weight of the animal and the na- 

 ture of the work he is expected to perform will admit of. I am not now 

 writing for the trotting horseman, who knows his own business better 

 than I can teach him. In referring to shoeing smiths it is possible that 

 I should have made an exception in favor of the finished artist who 

 arms the feet of the trotter with those masterpieces of skill and inge- 

 nuity which balance his gait, level his action and perfect the rhythm of 

 the motion with which he spurns the flying track behind him, when 

 thousands of anxious eyes watch his every footstep, and fortunes de- 

 pend on the length and tirelessness of his stride. That is a branch of 

 the business which has received an amount of attention and achieved 

 triumphs unrivaled or unapproached in other lands. Yet have I seen 

 that artist (for ho is nothing less), after fitting and setting a shoe, per- 

 fect in workmanship as a piece of jewelry, reach out for his tool box 

 and rasp the foot from the coronary band to the plantar border, and 

 thus wantonly court disaster, for what reason let him tell us if he can. 



Heavy shoes not only burden the animal which is condemned to wear 

 them, for there is truth in the old adage, " an ounce at the toe means a 

 pound at the withers ; " but they also increase the concussion insepara- 

 ble from progression, and even in the trotter, whose work is meted out 

 to him with judicious care, although the weight doubtless accomplishes 

 the work for which it was intended, it is a draft at usury on the 

 horse's future soundness, which that animal is bound to take up at ma- 

 turity. 



The legitimate mission of the shoo is to prevent undue wear of the 

 walls, and a light shoe will do this quite as well as a heavy one 5 it is 

 moreover entirely erroneous to suppose that a heavy shoo necessarily 

 wears longer than a light one, as experience proves the contrary, in many 

 instances, to be the case. Even among our mammoth draft horses, 

 whose shoes must of course be made with reference to the weight they 

 have to bear and the inordinate strain to which they are subjected when 

 the animal which wears them is at work, I am not prepared to admit 

 that it is by any means necessary to add to the concussion to which his 

 feet are unavoidably subjected, by several pounds of unyielding iron 



