326 SHOEING HORSES. 



That the system of horseshoeing as it stands, even in the 

 most skillful hands, is decidedly pregnant with mischief to the 

 foot, no one who is conversant with the facts will venture to 

 deny. Every time a horse is shod, every time a nail is driven, 

 means so much injury to the foot. The better the job, the less 

 that injury is ; but there is no such thing as absolute immunity 

 from an evil which must always exist in inverse ratio to the 

 skill displayed in the execution of the work. "We have,, how- 

 ever, to deal with facts as we find them, and if we have, day 

 by day, to impose upon our horses work of a nature which en- 

 tails upon their feet more wastes of power than Nature can re- 

 place during the ordinary interval of rest, we are obliged to 

 adopt a defense of some kind. 



A human being can tell where his shoe hurts him ; a horse 

 cannot ; therefore he has to suffer the pain. Just think of how 

 many sufferers there are. More than half of the men who pre- 

 sume to shoe horses ought to be tried and convicted of cruelty 

 to animals. All they do is to slash and spike the animals by 

 guesswork. One side of the foot is almost sure to be lower 

 than the other ; what a strain it brings on the knee when one 

 side ' of the foot is half an inch lower than the other. It 

 wrenches it from the knee to the coronet joint, causes more 

 pressure on the lower quarter, and also creates contraction by 

 a continual pressure against the corner of the coffin bone in 

 both forward and hind feet. Tipping the foot to one side or 

 the other causes a strain on the spavin joint, which, in turn, 

 causes lameness. 



There is another evil which is much practiced by inexper- 

 ienced workmen, and that is lowering the outside of the hind 

 foot in order to prevent interfering. This is wrong. No mat- 

 ter how much the foot is turned both pastern and cannon bones 

 will have to come to the center of gravity, and rolling the 

 ankle often causes them to cockle very badly. 



Man may, by fitting up the feet in various ways, gait a 

 horse, or produce certain results which may be desirable, but 

 any and all tampering with the feet so as to turn them out of 



