484 
ON SHOEING HORSES. 
By Shoeing Smiths. 
To the Editor of “ The Veterinarian .” 
Sir,— The men in our shop having heard master tell a gentleman 
about Mr. Gloag pressing horses’ feet in a vice, our curiosity was 
set a going to know what it was; when we found you were also 
writing what you call a leader, the wheeler having had the hardest 
work. We were wondering about the gentleman you mention 
belonging to a building society, and that the old fabric at Pancras 
was being served as you write, when the boy who picks up the 
stubs and sweeps out the shop put us right by saying, you meant 
our business; therefore it is time we looked about us, because, as 
they are going to make bread by machinery, you may be after 
shoeing horses by steam, and then, unless they grow bread-stuff in 
the same way, we may be obliged to migrate. We have talked 
the matter over at our club, and a few of us have come to an 
agreement, instead of putting on our jackets and walking off, leaving 
the ’bus horses, and my lord’s horses that are wanted for court or 
the opera, standing unshod in the shop, to resist any new-fangled 
changes by what we believe you calls ‘‘moral force.” We, of 
course, do not know which way the cat will jump among these 
experiments: all we ask is, you to be so kind as to put in a few 
lines from us about what we know, whether it may be old signifies 
nothing. 
I was some years ago at Newmarket. I shod a colt for Mr. B. 
the trainer, as I supposed, very rvell; I pared the sole thin, and, 
with one of Long’s best, the corn places, (where, when the shoe was 
on, the Italian boy might have hidden his white mice), the shoe 
being laid flat, as is the custom, upon the heels. In a few days 
down came Mr. B., complaining that the colt was easing his feet 
in the stable, and when led out was cramped in going. Master 
told me to widen and spring the heels of the shoes, and he went a 
little better. I went up a few days after to plate a filly, and the 
old man said, “ You lay that plate flat on the heels, but galloping 
over the two-year-old course will separate it from the heels.” 
“You’re right, master; yet the iron is the best Swedish; but it matters 
not, I did the same with the colt’s shoes.” “ Yes,” said he; “ but the 
heels have grown down, and he begins to go feelingly again.” I 
pared away a little of the horn of the heels, and told him to do the 
same in a few days. “Good, man,” said he, “but cannot you smiths 
think of some contrivance without my being obliged thus to shoe 
the coll myself/” “Yes, Sir, if I take him to the forge and remove 
the shoes, notwithstanding the strength of the heels, the crust in 
