46 
A. ZUNDEL. 
pared ; too often the heels are lowered to excess, while the toe 
is allowed to remain too long; too often again the bars are 
hollowed too deeply, thinned too much, as well as the frog. The 
wall then tends to retreat, as it is no longer protected behind. 
In reducing the height of the heels, in opening them, the tendency 
to contraction is increased; the thinned hoof drys up, the 
lowered heels have lost their strength, and the bars are unable to 
perform their functions. 
A vicious adjustment also contributes to contraction. When 
the shoe is so prepared that its upper face is concave, and its 
branches form a plane inclined from without inwards, and when 
this face extends back to the heels, there is a circular pressure 
produced upon the inferior border of the wall. There is a case 
in which the foot has a tendency to drop, pressed in as it also is 
by the weight of the body as the foot rests on the ground. 
Another wrong practice is to place the nails too near the heels. 
The fixing of the shoe on the foot tends always to produce con¬ 
traction, as Bredey Clark observed ; it especially prevents the 
widening of the hoof, as remarked by Rodet and Coleman. But 
this effect of the nails is well marked at the heels, where they 
prevent the dilatation of that part of the foot. 
These effects of shoeing are to be observed so much the more 
rapidly and seriously when the hoof is thicker, denser, and of a 
finer structure, as it is observed in small feet. In these feet, the 
hoof grows more rapidly, and is on this account more ready to con¬ 
tract. Let us now consider that this effect of shoeing is permanent, 
and that to that effect of a first shoeing comes to be added that of 
a second, of a third, and so on, and we can readily understand 
how truly can be attributed the great number of contracted heels 
one may meet with, to erroneous shoeing. 
Inaction is also an important cause, as, says Turner, the 
horse is by nature destined to be always in motion ; it is a con¬ 
dition of its health, and it is on account of this condition that in 
the state of nature, he is free from contracted heels. It is, on the 
contrary, because the domesticated horse is confined within a 
stall for hours and days, that his feet become contracted. We 
have seen colts raised without exercise, whose feet were con¬ 
tracted before they were shod. 
