AS TO SOUNDNESS. 69 
over the regular time, and then when he has a tendency 
to have long toes, the strain upon his back tendons for 
some time before he is re-shod is very great. In all 
cases you will do well to bear this in mind in examining 
the back of the leg from the knee downwards, when you 
either find long toes or see that the toes have a tendency 
to become long. 
We now come to the third division of our classification, 
namely, anomalies of position. 
Upright pasterns, as a general thing, are short as well, 
but I have already pointed out that they may be long 
and upright. With short upright pasterns the line of 
weight passes through the foot (see Fig. 2,°). The jar 
in such cases is so great that the foot is extremely likely 
to be the seat of grave malformation or disease. We 
frequently have shaky thickened fetlock joints. The 
stilty crambling gait of such horses is highly jarring 
and disayreeable to the rider, and renders the horse 
liable to fall. Such are highly unsafe for riding or for 
driving in two-wheeled vehicles. When the weight comes 
through the foot we look for corns, sandcrack, boxy 
heels, withered frogs, and thrush. We may not have 
all these, but some of them are sure to be present. More 
difficult cases for us are those where the weight does not 
pass through the foot, but very nearly so. A horse 
perhaps that is growing old is brought to us. We find 
that he is sound, but the pasterns are growing year by 
year more upright. We cannot reject such a case, 
although we may feel certain that in another year he 
