'The most humane of modern horse-owners is an ignorant
tyrant to his graceful bondservant' — Mayhew
'The history of almost every horse in this kingdom is a struggle to exist, against human endeavours to deprive it of utility ' — Mayhew
'The eye soon gets accustomed to deformity, and then does not perceive it' — Bracy Clark
'Certainly he who prevents does more than he who cures' — Philip Astley
'No foot, no horse' — Old Saying
HORSES AND ROADS
OR
HOW TO KEEP A HORSE SOUND ON HIS LEGS
BY
FREE-LANCE
BEING A SERIES OF PAPERS REPUBLISHED FROM
'THE FARM JOURNAL'
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1880
All rights reserved
PREFACE.
It is a generally acknowledged fact that large numbers of horses are worn out in the feet and legs at a premature age, whilst nearly all are frequently laid off work by lameness; and these two misfortunes for the poor animals appear to be accepted as unavoidable for them. To combat this belief, these papers were written. On their first appearance they excited a certain amount of interest, and several gentlemen put to practical experiment the principles advanced. The results obtained by three of them are given, by their kind permission, in the Appendix.
It is not attempted to palm off any patent upon the public, as the author has nothing to sell, and can be neither benefited nor prejudiced in any way by the adoption or rejection of his principles. He has written from disinterested motives; and he has been rewarded, before the book is published by the knowledge that many horses are already reaping benefit from his efforts in their favour.
HORSES AND ROADS;
OR,
HOW TO KEEP A HORSE SOUND ON HIS LEGS.
CHAPTER I.
SPRINGS AND BRAKES TO VEHICLES.
In the crisis through which agriculturists are at present passing, economical improvements of all kinds are being sought after. Much has been written about the horse; but the field he affords for writing is so extensive and fertile, that much still remains to be said; indeed, he will afford a theme for a very long time to come, to say the least.
To begin with, let us consider the vehicles he is often obliged to draw. Mayhew, an eminent veterinary surgeon, formerly demonstrator at the Royal Veterinary College, states, in one of the various works he has written upon the horse, that 'it is a disgrace to the intelligence of the present age that any cart should be built without springs; the real question being whether living
thews and sinews should endure the burden, or whether this shall be imposed upon inanimate metal? Reducing the matter to £ s. d., which is cheaper? Fact pronounces “iron” to be the answer.’ Thus much for springs, upon which nothing more is necessary than to give full and hearty assent to Mayhew’s opinion.
those that come after, and so on, until the axletree comes down on the ground and is either broken or bent, the shaft horses being generally injured, and sometimes the driver also.
The brakes used on the Continent are always applied to both wheels on the same axle, and they are not screwed up tight enough to effect an entire stoppage of the wheels, as it is found that wheels with smooth tires skidding on a smooth road do not break momentum as much as when the wheel is almost stopped, and biting, by friction, the blocks of the breaks. These brakes vary in form. For horses driven from a box or dickey they are generally worked by means of a screw with a cranked handle, sometimes by a lever and a toothed rack; and for such vehicles as are driven by carters that walk alongside their teams, or even a single horse, they are most commonly a lever which has a ring at the top, to which is attached a rope, the other end of which passes through another ring in the shaft, enabling the driver to pull down the lever. He then makes a fast knot, but a slip one, which he can easily pull loose, and thus throw off the action of the brake without stopping his horses to either put it ‘off’ or ‘on.’ As being safer, the lever is sometimes placed behind the vehicle. Two-wheeled vehicles, with half a dozen horses, with one of these horses only in the shafts, are thus safely used.
A horse should not have to work when going down hill; but, on the contrary, it should be so managed for him that at every descent, however gentle,
he should have some respite from work, as a sort of set-off against the hard labour he endures when drawing a load up hill. There are very many reasons for this besides this most apparent one. Even with our four-wheeled heavy trucks and waggons, the chain or skid is not always put on for every slight descent, as the brake is on the Continent. The approaches to London Bridge, for instance, are bad—in certain weathers especially so—but frequently skids are not applied on account of the necessity for stopping to put them on and off—which stoppage the traffic does not always admit of—and so the poor horses pay in a direct way, and their careless masters in rather a more indirect one. Unfortunately they only pay out of their pockets, whilst the horse pays with his frame.
railway companies are only cited because they have actually in their employ the men who could see this at a glance, if their attention were directed to it, and almost as soon remedy the evil. But no—they continue in the same old groove, and squander thousands yearly upon horseflesh, at the same time that they are also cruelly working a noble animal, by many considered the most noble and useful ever designed by Nature for man's use.
applied to keep their hoofs together, and yet they work them, and no one interferes. They manage to steer clear of the law, of which it has been said that 'a coach and four may be driven safely through any Act.' These diseases are the result of reckless treatment, which is very unprofitable to horse owners, let alone the cruelty.
It is pretty well known—or, if it is not, it should be—that any of these diseases, once set up, are extremely difficult to cure; but, on the contrary, mostly go on increasing under the care of ignorant farriers. If an intelligent veterinary should be called in, he will mostly advise a long rest and mild remedies; but this means loss of work, although it means also a prolongation of the useful life of the horse, if the warning be taken on the first appearance of disease. In general, however, violent remedies, such as blistering, &c., are resorted to, and as soon as possible the horse is put to work again, without having had even the benefit of a rest; for a horse with a blister on cannot be expected to enjoy as a rest the few days he is suffering with a blister.
Railway companies are not referred to in this case, or in any future ones. They were mentioned only as being a power in the land, with a special facility for applying mechanical means to reduce the work of their horses, which are spread over the whole of the kingdom. Improvements on their part would therefore be more extended, general, and useful, than even those adopted by brewers or distillers, who, having, as a rule, no dividends to pay, perhaps work
their horses under the mark; and they are not losers by that, as their animals last them longer. Still, no one takes this into account; and they are by many considered prodigal in horseflesh. Most likely they know to the contrary; still they may do even better by breaking their trucks down every descent.
Brakes cost infinitely less than forced losses in the shape of rests, and still more in the shape of new acquisitions of horseflesh. It is within the bounds of possibility that the men connected with the care of such horses might be brought to acknowledge that they were none the worse for the brakes; but, ignorant and bigoted as they generally are, it might be difficult to extract from any but an exceptionally intelligent and observing man that they thought much of the change. They know all about horses—in their own opinion. Of course, they should not be led to believe that all existing diseases can thus be entirely cured, especially if in at all an advanced stage. They should, if reasonable, be satisfied on seeing them arrested in the case of old horses, and on having it pointed out to them that young horses were free from them for a longer time, and in a less degree, than formerly under the old system; and they may be brought to confess that the horses generally ‘did better,’ to use a phrase very common amongst this class of men.
But agriculturists extensively use two-wheeled carts without any means of breaking them down hill;
007
and hills in the country roads are constantly to be met with both longer and steeper than those to be found in London, although not always so slippery. In these cases their horses suffer, at least, as much deterioration as any of those hitherto mentioned. They load the carts heavily, as they try to work near, and so make their horses ‘earn their living,’ as they really should do in their case, which is at present a hard one; but they should consider thoughtfully whether it is profitable to make a horse work hard when going down hill, and so injuring him really more than in drawing a load up hill.
that she gave to all other creatures designed for the use of man. It is not in their lawful use that they become so soon worn out, but in the abuse that is made of them.
If Mayhew used such forcible language about springs, it may, with at least equal justice, be said that it is a disgrace to the intelligence of the present age that any vehicle whatever, from the heaviest waggon down to the pony basket of the farmer’s daughter, should be built without a brake; the real question being whether living thews and sinews should endure the burthen, or whether this should be imposed upon inanimate metal and wood. Reducing the matter to £ s. d., which is the cheaper?
CHAPTER II.
DOUGLAS ON HORSE-SHOEING—STREET ACCIDENTS AND BRAKES—LORD PEMBROKE AND MAYHEW ON SERVANTS.
A veterinary surgeon, Mr. W. Douglas, late 10th Royal Hussars, was so much impressed by the miseries, diseases, and dangers caused to horses by their being pushed down hill by their loads, that it caused him to write a book upon ‘Horse-shoeing.’ Here is part of his preface:—
‘Passing down Ludgate Hill one day [this was whilst it was paved with stone] my attention was directed to the pitiful condition of a horse in the shafts of a large waggon. The poor animal was not drawing the load, but was being driven down the descent by the crushing weight behind; and, utterly unable, from the manner in which it was shod, to withstand the pressure, it had gathered its hind legs well under, and its fore legs well in advance of its body, in a helpless struggle to avert the fall which it too evidently knew was at hand. Never did I witness such a picture of powerless terror as that horse presented, as with eyes starting, body shaking, and limbs stiffened, it was carried
downwards against its will, until the fore and hind feet slipping in the same direction, it came down upon its left side with a crash. The thought of what agony that poor beast must have suffered, even before it fell, has haunted me ever since, and knowing if the horse had been able to use the supple elastic cushion nature has provided its feet with to prevent their slipping—namely, the frog—it could easily have controlled the pressure from behind, I resolved if possible to direct public attention to the present cruel and unwarrantable system of shoeing horses.’
that ‘the frame of the horse is stronger than machinery; but it cannot resist the wilfulness of human misrule.’ Yet, strangely enough, this gentleman, energetically as he speaks, has also failed to seek in mechanics a means of saving the shaft horse excessive and superfluous labour when going down hill, whether over slippery paving, or over rough country roads.
Amongst the societies which we rejoice to possess in England, there is one to prevent dangerous driving. How many of those who form this society have this sensible appendage to any of their own carriages, even those to which they daily trust their own necks? Accidents are not always the faults of drivers. About a year and a half ago, a brougham horse took fright at the engine whistle, and bolted down Ludgate Hill at a gallop. The weather was dry, and the hill not slippery. The coachman succeeded in turning into Farringdon Street (although it looked as if that was the way the horse wanted to go); yet, up the street, it ran into another carriage, and both were wrecked, and both horses very much hurt. Fortunately, no person was seriously injured on the occasion; but the pecuniary damage was
great. If the coachman had had, close to his right hand, the handle of a brake which he could have instantly applied firmly to both wheels, he could have diminished the speed from the outset, and have stopped entirely before he came to the spot where the collision occurred; or, at least, he might have brought the speed down sufficiently to enable himself and the
other driver between them to avoid it. It was not the slippery shoes (objectionable as they undoubtedly are) that did the harm in this case; but the want of a controlling power more efficient than the man’s arms, which only control the mouth of the horse under any circumstances; and, even then, only as long as the horse chooses to submit, or is able to do so. A man cannot ‘pull a horse up’ with the reins used as a mechanical power, any more than he can get into a basket and raise himself from the ground by lifting at the handles, as the principle is the same; but resistance thrown against the collar will soon tell upon the horse’s speed, and the means of throwing it there by the application of friction to both hind wheels (just short of making them ‘skid’) would do away with a great deal of the present losses of life, and deterioration of valuable property, put down to ‘dangerous driving.’
Conservatism is proverbially strong amongst horse owners, and still more so with grooms and others that surround the horse. In the last century, Lawrence wrote:—‘There are some toils to which even the rich must submit. True knowledge is not to be acquired, or the acquisition to be enjoyed, by deputy; and, if gentlemen and large proprietors of horses are desirous to avoid the difficulties, dangers, and cruelties perpetually resulting from prejudice, ignorance, and knavery combined, they must embrace the resolution of making themselves so far master of the subject as to be able to direct those whom they employ.’
The Earl of Pembroke held very similar sentiments. Mayhew, one of our most modern authorities, says:—‘Of all persons living, grooms generally are the worst informed: here is the curse of horses. No other servant possesses such power, and no domestic more abuses his position. It is impossible to amend the regulation of any modern stable without removing some of this calling, or overthrowing some of the abuses, with a perpetuation of which the stable servant is directly involved.’But, of the master, he says:—‘The most humane of modern proprietors is an ignorant tyrant to his graceful bondservant;’ to this he might truthfully have added that the most intelligent amongst masters was but a narrowminded bigot.Tel maître tel valet. Betwixt these two classes stands the helpless horse!—not to mention their natural chosen ally, the farrier.
therefore, is for owners to escape from the thraldom in which their servants, at present, hold them. Their fetters are self-imposed, and they carry about with them, at all hours, the key to enable them to cast them off; apathy, only, prevents them from doing so. Any man, with determination, could walk into his stable free of them for ever, whenever he chose, and at a moment’s notice. It is humiliating for an educated owner to admit tacitly that such a low class should be his superior, which he is really doing when he asks, or acts upon, their advice; or, which comes to the same thing, when he leaves them to do as they like.
him to travel beyond the limits of his subject.’ So, upon his authority, supported by that of so many others, right away back to the last century, every one is safe in coming to the conclusion that his ‘man’ knows nothing about horses, and that it is high time that he should take the thing into his own hands; for, unless he does so, the prevention of mismanagement is impossible. If he lack confidence in his own knowledge of the animal, which in any case should not be less than that of a carter or horsekeeper, let him read. The subject is replete with interest and entertainment; but he should choose modern works if he wishes to march
with the age.
CHAPTER III.
NOSTRUMS—ARSENIC AND ANTIMONY—HOOF-OINTMENTS—‘STOPPINGS.’
secretly administered to an alarming extent—not sufficiently to kill the horses right off, but sufficiently to undermine their constitutions.
If veterinary authorities should be read, the following dicta will be found having reference to the foregoing remarks:—‘Acute gastritis: cause—poison;’ ‘inflamed bladder: cause—abuse of medicine;’ ‘diabetes: cause—diuretic drugs;’ ‘inflamed kidneys: cause—nitre.’ The innocent (?) and phlegmatic owners either are ignorant that their men are making use of these agents, or else indolently satisfy themselves by remarking that their ‘man’ understands horses very well and that ‘if he does not bring them round, no one else can;’ until things get serious and the vet. has to be called in. When this gentleman is sent for, he has generally a serious case to deal with, and one that usually lasts a long time, and, consequently, entails a severe loss.
Besides this, many owners knowingly allow their men to order powerful medicines in the shape of ‘balls’ called ‘physic,’ ‘condition,’ ‘diuretic,’ &c., and allow their men to give them to the horses, having, at the same time, very little or no control as to when or why they should be given. Now these cost more than arsenic, &c., and could be more easily accounted for, because the men rarely go so far as to lay out their own money on them, and the owner thinks some medicine must be necessary in a stable; yet even then he is generally guilty of allowing or even asking his man an unmerited
opinion as to its use, besides being in the dark as to what drugs, secretly given by the said man before, may have caused the disease, which, however, will be attributed to anything but his own act.
There are yet other ‘remedies’ kept by all stablemen. They are used more openly, and are even highly approved of by some owners. First amongst these rank ‘hoof-ointments,’ be they either a ‘secret’ with the stablemen, or a ‘patent’—it does not make much difference which, as to their nonutility, or, rather, their positive insalubrity. They almost always consist of admixtures of some or all of the following ingredients:—Tar, bees-wax, train oil, tallow or suet, and honey. Mr. Douglas says that if applications of this kind were made daily instead of occasionally, no horse would have a morsel of sound horn at the end of six months to nail a shoe to: ‘for it shuts up the pores in the horn, prevents the natural moisture from reaching the surface outwardly, and the air from circulating inwards—consequences which act upon the horse with ruinous results.’ ‘If you tell a groom this, he will either refuse to listen to your arguments, or laugh at them as being the height of absurdity.’ How many horse owners are on a level with their servants in this matter!
Cowdung, mixed sometimes with some of the above-mentioned abominations, is firmly believed in by servants, and its use condoned by their masters, for ‘stopping’—that is to say, stuffing the hoof with—up (or down) to the level of the bottom of the
shoe. Cowdung is supposed by these ignorant people to be emollient, because it is soft; but everything that glitters is not necessarily gold, and cowdung instead of being an emollient, is a powerful irritant; and so between ‘ointment’ and ‘stopping’ they are using their utmost endeavours, in surrounding the hoof on all sides with everything that ignorance and stupidity can devise (up to the present time), to render it brittle and otherwise diseased.
of wanton cruelty—far from it; but he might avoid inflicting upon them much suffering, with gain to himself, if he would turn part of the attention he bestows upon ‘rotation of crops,' &c., to his teams—and those to whom he entrusts them.
CHAPTER IV.
Servants are apt to be very exacting as to the quantity of straw for litter, and they keep some all day long under the horse’s feet, ignorantly believing that it is a comfort and a benefit to the horse.Here, again, they are wrong; and upon both points. Let any proprietor go to his stable, upon returning on a Sunday from morning church service, when the horses will, perhaps, have been left to themselves for three hours, and he will find that his horses have been trying to get rid of it by scraping holes in it, in which to stand in ease and comfort on the bare floor, having pushed as much as they can back into the gangway. It is probable, also, that instinct takes part in their dislike to it, on the score of its being unhealthy, as well as uncomfortable to them.
Xenophon wrote in praise of a bare stone pavement: ‘It will cool, harden, and improve a horse’s feet merely by standing on it.’ Lord Pembroke says:
‘The constant use of litter makes the feet tender, and causes swelled legs; moreover, it renders
the animals delicate. Swelled legs may be frequently reduced to their proper natural size by taking away the litter only; which, in some stables where ignorant grooms and farriers govern, would be a great saving of bleeding and physic, besides straw. I have seen, by repeated experiments, legs swell and unswell, by leaving litter, or taking it away, like mercury in a weather glass.’ It has also been found in the army that the troopers’ horses, which are not bedded down during the day, never suffer so much from corns, contractions, thrush, and grease as the officer’s chargers do, which have straw to stand upon whenever they are in the stable.
point of view. The problem to be solved is, how to keep your horse in health and get the most work you reasonably can out of him. Straw, used with judgment, will be found as economical as an3rthing else; it should only be put under the horse the last thing at night, and it should be removed the first thing in the morning. The horse will dirty it but little in the night; the dirty portion should, of course, be carried out of the stable, and, in this manner, no alarming expense of straw is incurred.
It is well known to many travellers that in countries quite as cold as England straw is so scarce and valuable that horses even sleep by night on the bare floor; and the horses from some of these countries are imported to England with a great reputation for possessing hardiness and sound constitutions. But they do not dwell with us long before we improve them down to a level with our own breeds (in this respect), by hot stabling, foul atmosphere, and many other fanciful crotchets which come under the headings of ‘mistaken kindness,’ or ‘mistaken economy;’ and economy well understood is specially in demand, and should be sought, in the present ‘hard times.’ In the case of straw a double economy is very visibly to be found in using it sparingly, as the outlay upon the article itself is reduced; and the horse, by being freer from ailments, can do more work in the course of the year.
Certain classes of horses get, in the course of the year, a diminution or cessation of labour. This is
looked forward to by the owner with an inane kind of idea that the horses will receive benefit from their ‘rest;’ as, indeed, they really ought to do, if they were sanely dealt with during that time. The stableman looks forward to the same period with ferocious satisfaction, as then he will have an opportunity of giving swing to his cruelties. Beforehand he is rejoicing in projects of ’physicking’ (i.e. purging) and blistering, and then ‘conditioning,’ his hapless and helpless horses, and counting on the empire he has over his master—and he is seldom wrong on that head—for carte blanche. Mayhew says ‘the prejudices of ignorance are subjects for pity: the slothfulness of the better educated merits reprobation.’ ‘No slave proprietor possesses the power with which the groom is invested.’ In Brazil the slave-owner is not allowed by law to flog his slaves himself; if they are judged to merit flogging they have to be sent to an official specially appointed in each district for that purpose, which official is, of course, free from anger and vindictiveness, and only lays on the regular strokes, which the owner would be likely to exceed both in force and number.
favourites. A horse first weakened by a drastic purge, and then tortured by one of these infernal inventions, is more injured than if he had continued at hard work instead of having his ‘rest.’ A modern professor of veterinary science says: ‘Let all gentlemen discharge the veterinary surgeon who proposes to blister the legs of their horses. The author has beheld hundreds of blisters applied to the legs, but he cannot remember one instance in which such applications were productive of the slightest good.’ Youatt said: ‘Agriculturists should bring to their stables the common sense which directs them in the usual concerns of life.’ Youatt wrote half a century ago, and for farmers; yet it is doubtful whether things have not got worse since then, in spite of his advice. Mayhew says that the administration of three or four bran mashes is in general a sufficient purge; and he further says that, ‘during the years he was in active practice, he does not remember to have given a dose of aloes’ (presumably only then on an emergency) ‘that the symptoms did not afterwards cause him to regret the administration. They are at present chiefly employed in accordance with the dictates of routine.’
most, or nearly all omnibus, van, car, cab, and tramway horses are driven without them in London.
Many gentlemen have also done away with them for their horses; even four-in-hand drags are frequently seen without them—but cart horses, say for instance (and only because they happened to turn up first on the surface of memory), those working in the carts belonging to the vestry of St. George’s, Hanover Square, are still hampered with them. They are to be seen with their chins drawn up to their breasts, thus having their stride shortened, and thus making many more steps than natural to each mile they travel; and every step, short as it may be, entails a putting in motion of the flexor and extensor muscles and their tendons. But Nature has determined the real economical swing of these muscles and their tendons in each direction; and so it results that, by depriving her of her will, such horses are prevented from exercising their powers to the full, and at great inconvenience to themselves, and prejudice to their lasting power also; for something is bound to suffer undue wear and tear when natural extension and flexion are interfered with—even if it should be only the sheaths of the tendons, to put it in a very moderate light.
Farmers plead that cart horses, driven by a man on foot, must have something for that man to catch hold of at certain times, and they also parade and make much of the fact that when they have a hill to ascend, the bearing rein is loosened; therefore
they admit that a horse should have ‘the use of his head’ at certain times, yet they do not know where to draw the line, although nothing is easier to draw, if common sense were appealed to.
The cart horse should always have the free use of his head at a walk, as it should and does govern his stride; and if a rein of some sort is necessary for carters to lay hold of occasionally, the measure of the length of that rein is easily found. It is just the length that will allow a horse to use his fullest exertion up hill without bearing upon it. To this they object again that a rein of that length would hang unequally on the sides of the horses’ necks and be troublesome and unsightly. This only shows them to be short of inventive faculties. They have only to sew on a ring just at the double of the reins, at their determined length, and hitch this ring on the hames, when they would find the reins to hang equally and gracefully, and always ready to be caught hold of; although the best carters lay hold of the cheek strap, above the bit, and thus manage their horses better than those who take their hold below the bit.
We won’t quarrel over the last point; but, in the name of common sense, let a horse always have his natural stride—it is essential to his economical work. Yet cart horses are to be seen, in town and country, pegging away with reduced strides, expending on a four-mile journey the same exertion that they would, if allowed, only use on a five-mile one. Their owners handicap them.
CHAPTER V.
and pernicious system, when their masters have differed from them, they have on purpose lamed horses, and imputed the fault to the shoes, after having in vain tried, by every sort of invention and lies, to discredit the use of them.’
Mr. Lupton, M.R.C.V.S., only three years since approved the opinion that ‘the master who makes the welfare of his steed subservient to the idle prejudices of his groom, is fitly punished in the lengthened period of his animal’s compulsory idleness, appropriately finished by the payment of a long bill to the veterinary surgeon.’ And, of farriers, he says: ‘Farriers ought to go through a course of instruction previously to being allowed to operate upon structures, the anatomy, physiology, and economic uses of which they have never studied, and, consequently, never understood.’ When people have been having this kind of thing continually impressed upon them for such a length of time, it seems strange that they have not long since taken the management of the part of the horse that requires the greatest supervision and intelligence out of the hands of two such ignorant sets of people.
‘One horse can wear out four pairs of feet.’ That is because the feet are ill treated. Mr. John Bright has discovered, through thirty-four years’ experience, and a loss of 3OOl. in the shape of printing, that ‘farmers do not buy books!’ One would hardly have thought that. We know that they not only buy papers, but that they are also extensive contributors to them.
What percentage of horse owners accompany their horses to the forge and see them shod? and, what is of great importance, see their feet when the shoes are removed? They would be astonished, for instance, to find amongst many horses that, when the toe had been pared and rasped, they would be able to discover that the outer layer of the wall or crust did not make one body with the inner layer, as it should do if the foot were healthy, but is separated from it by dry fibre. This is the way in which seedy toe begins; and the joint causes of it are, standing on dirty litter, the use of hoof ointments, stopping with cowdung, &c., burning the seat of the shoe with a hot shoe, slipping down hill, &c.
is discovered. But in the forge, the application of such facts is by most smiths utterly ignored.’ We may add that to most owners its existence is utterly unknown in the beginning, as, when the shoe is on, its first appearance is not to be detected, for of course the iron covers and hides it. It can only be discovered by paring or rasping the bottom of the hoof, when the shoe is off, at the toe or quarter; the toe is where it is most frequently to be found.
he has not the slightest idea of what corresponds internally to the parts he so mercilessly destroys. There are very few smiths who could tell, off-hand, for instance, how many bones are entirely imbedded in the hoof, and how many only partially imbedded; so they are working in the dark.
Modern authorities tell us that no part of the hoof should, on any account, be cut or pared, except the seat of the shoe—that is to say, the wall or crust only, without touching the sole, frog, or bars; as all of these were placed there by Nature for special purposes, and she has so ordered matters that these parts cannot possibly overgrow themselves. Yet smiths will not let them alone, unless a man goes to look after them, and has sufficient strength of mind to resist their entreaties to be allowed to take off ‘just a little bit, here and there,’ in order to make what they call ‘a clean foot.’ Never mind appearances on the bottom of a horse’s foot, especially as this kind of neatness is taking his legs from under him. Don’t listen to their arguments on any account; have your own way, and see that only the seat of the shoe is pared down on the crust.
Any amount of authorities could be cited here in support of this advice; so many, in fact, that it is uncalled for to quote any of them. The shoer will next cast round in search of a shoe, or even four of them, that will come near fitting the horse. Sometimes he finds that he has to alter the shape to bring it to the hoof; but, if it comes within a little of that much, he proceeds to rasp and pare the hoof,
to make it fit the shoe, just as if the hoof were a mere block of horn, instead of every part of it being composed of an outside, or so-called, insensitive covering to an inside corresponding one, which is usually denominated sensitive, because it is more sensitive than the outside one. If he should find that the shoe best suited to his fancy should be too long, he proceeds to shorten it by turning up more calk at the heel.
Now, calks are a great abomination, be they ever so slight. They were conceived by ignorant, unreflecting people, in order to act as brakes; which brakes, we have seen, should be applied to the wheels of the cart, instead of to the horse's foot. Nature has determined the right ‘tread’ for a horse; calkins, by raising the heel, interfere seriously with her designs. All the interior parts of the horse’s foot are shaped in harmony with the exterior; the coffin bone is wedge-shaped, and, when the foot is tilted up behind, it is forced into the wedge-shaped interior concavity of the toe. This is one of the causes of seedy toe, sandcrack, and laminitis, commonly called ‘fever in the feet.’ Mr. Douglas happily calls to mind that raising the heels also shortens the stride.
Is it customary to put calkins on the shoes of race horses? From an illustration of the ‘plates’ they wear, given by Mayhew in his ‘Illustrated Horse Management,’ it appears that they do not run in calkins = stride counts; and trainers have found out thus much, however short they may still be in
their researches as to the right way of shoeing. Race horses still slip (witness the Derby of 1879) both backwards and forwards, and trainers have not yet arrived at the acme of treatment of the horse’s foot. They will not like to be told so, but il n'y a que la verité qui offense in instances of this kind. Lord Pembroke hated calks, and he lays it down as a rule that ‘from the race horse to the cart horse the same system of shoeing, and description of shoes, should be observed; the size, weight, and thickness only of them should differ.’
secretions of the bottom of the crust into a boiling state, and boiling means simply their entire decomposition; so, therefore, he actually kills the foundation on which a horse is built, and it is only the dead part that he has to cut away again (as regards the crust or wall) on the next occasion that he operates upon him. This burning-in business is, therefore, another cause of seedy-toe, false quarter, and sandcrack.
The opinion of Mr. Douglas is well worth reporting here. He says: ‘The fitting of the shoe can always be done better, in my opinion, when the iron is cold, than when hot. Heating the shoe is the quicker way, but it is also the most barbarous one. The mischief done at times, by this custom, was exemplified in the case of Mr. Bevan’s trotting-horse Hue and Cry, which lost both its fore-feet through the shoes having been fitted red hot; and many animals, both before and since, have suffered like misfortunes from the same cause.’
In Spain it is the custom to shoe cold, and not one ‘herrador’ in a hundred has a forge or a pair of bellows on his premises. They even manufacture the shoes without the aid of fire; but it is true that Spanish iron, being primarily manufactured with wood charcoal, is particularly pure, soft, and ductile. The Spanish ’herrador’ or shoeing-smith only—for he does nothing else in the shape of iron forging—does not use the drawing knife (although, of course, the veterinary surgeon does), and he never touches or pares anything but the wall, which he pares down
with the butteris; and he would on no account put a calk on a shoe unless as an orthopcedic resource, and even then only when ordered by a V. S. The natural consequence is that Spanish horses are freer from foot diseases and lameness than are ours in England; and so unaccustomed are Spanish farriers to find foot lameness (as, amongst other things, they shoe short behind, and so let the horse tread on his own heels, thus preventing corns), that they generally suspect, and test for, lameness in the shoulder, when a lame horse is brought to them, before referring to his feet; unless, of course, it is palpable or visible to their experienced eye, from the outset, that the lameness is really in the foot. Most English farriers always suspect the foot first, and even then they cannot always pitch upon the foot on which the horse goes lame: they have even been known to operate first upon the three sound feet in succession, and then to take the lame one!
arms of the V the navicular bone is superposed. But what does a farrier either know or care about that? Must not improved principles be the best, or else why should they be called so? To all your objections he will only remark to your servant, behind your back, that you are only fit to carry food to a bear; and in this the servant will give him reason, and they will go and have a pint together, and laugh at you over drinking it. They are a hard lot to deal with, and that might be one of the reasons that so many owners ‘give it up.’ When the shoeing of a horse is left entirely in the hands of this brace of worthies, he is generally found to come home ‘going tender.’ And small wonder! Therefore, many people send their horses to be shod a day or two before sending them on a journey, with a prescience of this ordinary state of things; although the horses are really still going tender then, but only themselves are aware of it.
by the natural play and action of the muscles and tendons of the legs, to put down his foot in a natural manner in search of a natural ‘tread;’ and
so they continue to oppose his innate desire, until they bring about sprain, and ultimately contraction, of sinews. This is the reason that so many horses are to be seen walking on their toes (in London, cab horses may any day be seen which have to trot upon them), and the back sinews are often divided by veterinary surgeons to enable the horse to go on working at all. If the twist should be on one side it will bring about side-bone (or ossification of the cartilages of the foot), or splints, or something else where undue and unnatural strain or friction is thrown: especially is it the cause of ‘cutting.’ No unshod horse was ever known to ‘cut’ or ‘brush;’ but the shaping of the foot to the shoe is often the cause of this defect. The only alleviation for it, when once produced, is to study the ‘tread’ of which the horse is in search in order to free himself from it
(it is not likely that he is seeking to make things worse for himself), and then humour his instinct, instead of thwarting it, or looking upon it as perversity on his part, and opposing his exertions to get free from it. The ingenuity which some people are capable of displaying, when they have fully
made up their minds to oppose nature, is wonderful. They always break down, but, like true Britons, they are always ready to come to the charge again;
it is only deferred for them until the next meeting. It is a shocking abuse of pluck, all the same.
Who is there amongst human beings that does not prefer to wear an old pair of boots to a new pair—and why? Because the old pair has accommodated itself, by wear, to the ‘tread’ of the owner. The heel of a man’s foot is round on every side; yet his boot-maker will persist in making the heels of his boots with square edges; the consequence being that they wear more in one part than another. As all men have not the same natural tread, some will wear out the inside of the heel at the same time with the outside of the toe; whilst others will do exactly the contrary, or else wear them away in a different form from either. The time when they require mending is the time when they begin to feel comfortable; and the human shoemaker, like the equine one, proceeds to reinforce the parts that wear the quickest. The American Indian knows better than this. He fashions the exterior of the heel of the moccasin, as near as he can get it, to the shape of his own heel; and those who have worn moccasins for any length of time (as the writer has), positively ‘go lame’ when they have to put on a pair of civilised chaussures.
CHAPTER VI.
Fashion has of late led our ladies into the habit of wearing very high heels to their boots; and, to make things worse, they are placed, not under the ball of the heel, but ahead of it—that is to say, in a part which was not intended by nature to take their full weight at every step. Medical men tell us that since this became the fashion, hysteria is largely on the increase, and also that many other illnesses may be traced to the same cause. Fortunately, ladies can take off their boots when they come indoors (and they avail themselves of the chance), to put on others of different construction. From this the horse is debarred.
Medical men, as physiologists, are able to judge to a great extent as to the value or non-value of the foregoing remarks upon the horse’s foot and its shoe; they, at least, have no excuse for tacitly admitting that grooms and farriers should have any advantage
over them. Perhaps some of them may think it worth while to pick up their horses’ feet and examine them, and turn things over in their minds. Some of them will admit that they have become ‘groovey’ to an extent that is inexcusable, especially in men of science. Medical men are all masters of comparative anatomy; and here is a good opportunity for them to bring it profitably into use.
back.’ Mr. Douglas tells us that he found by careful experiment that light shoes will wear longer than heavy ones. The contract farrier, by putting on
heavy ones, is thus, as usual, wrong again; and he cheats himself this time—a very fitting judgment upon him. It is unfortunate that the rest of his mistakes do not equally recoil upon him. If this were the only mistake that he makes, it would prove that he takes no warning by experience, and
makes no useful observation, when he incontinently, although in an overreaching way, actually mulets himself! This man will also put in extra nails, and make clips on the shoe to help the nails to keep on
the exorbitant weight of iron; and all this means only so much extra mutilation of the hoof.
Horses in England are universally over-shod, as well as over-mutilated in the hoof; although, only last year, the author of the ‘Book of the Horse’ wrote, in a contemporary, ‘The general tendency of the age is to shoe as little as possible.’ This ‘tendency’ is very little apparent when people come to observe every horse they meet (as the writer does); although one notable exception (as there is to every rule) is to be found in the streets of London in the horses belonging to Mr. John Smither, East Smithfield. These horses do not slip about as much upon greasy pavements and asphalt as is the rule with other horses. At the present season, London observers may satisfy themselves on this score. This gentleman is owner
of a considerable number of horses, and his cars
and vans are to be continually met with in the City.
M. La Fosse was deeply impressed with the idea that less iron was required; and he boldly cut off one-half of the shoe—that is to say he maintained that a tip on the front half of the foot was all that was necessary. But, unfortunately, he spoilt a very bright idea in two ways—he recommended the heels of weak-footed horses to be pared (and this, of course, made them weaker), while he fastened on a tip, of about six inches in its entire length of iron, with eight nails. Horse-nails run from about one-eighth up to three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness. So he was inserting wedges amounting, in the aggregate, from one to one and a half inches in thickness, in six inches of horn, thus squeezing it into the space of five, or even four inches, and killing it from the clenches downwards and outwards.
Mr. Douglas says: ‘If the crust is closely examined with a microscope, its structure will be found to consist of a number of bristle-like fibres standing on end, but bearing diagonally towards the ground. From the particular longitudinal construction of the fibres, it follows that they will bear a great amount of weight so long as they are kept in their natural state. The crust so viewed resembles a number of small tubes, bound together by a hardened, glue-like substance. Whoever has seen a mitrailleuse gun, with its numerous barrels all soldered together, can form a very good idea of the
peculiar structure of the crust (or wall), especially if they were likewise to imagine the tubes to be filled with a thick fluid, the use of which is to nourish and preserve them.’
they are harnessed. If they were a little more observant they would discover that these horses were sounder in their feet and legs than are our London cab horses, which are shod to death, and most of them unsound and lame on all four feet (or legs).
Horse’s Foot,’ they are illustrated most admirably. The subject of them was a horse nine years old, which had always worn shoes since he was first put to work, and had the shoe removed on purpose for the investigation and experiment. The unshod foot was lifted up, and its contour traced with the greatest precision on a piece of board covered with paper. A similar board was then laid on the ground; the same foot was then placed upon it, and the opposite foot held up whilst it was again traced. The result was that it had expanded one-eighth part of an inch at the heels and quarters; and from the quarters towards the toe this gradually diminished, showing a space of four inches in front, two inches on each side of the centre of the toe, where no expansion whatever had taken place; the tracings proving, at the same time, that expansion was only lateral, and that none took place in the length of the foot from heel to toe. He states that he had other horses which had before shown a still greater expansion than this; but this was only whilst the horse was standing still, and upon three legs.
CHAPTER VII.
as on the front part of the hoof (or the toe) it has been proved that what little there may be is inappreciable, tips will not much interfere with it; that is to say, tips that do not cover more than the front half of the rim of the foot—for many farriers put on shoes that are only an inch short at the heels and with six nails in them, for turning horses out to grass, and call these tips, which they are not. A half-bred horse of 15½ hands will generally be shod with a piece of iron 14 inches in development when measured round its edge. Six inches would be the measure of a tip, and Mayhew gives an engraving in which a real tip is shown, and it is secured by only four nails.
obvious conclusion is that we require a strong sound foot to stand, not our work, but our shoe.’ He is, therefore, a strong advocate for the use of tips, adding that ‘A sportsman, well known some little time ago in the shires, shod all his horses with tips—hunters, hacks, and carriage horses; but, although it was seen that his stud went very well shod in this manner, no one followed his example, the world in general being staunch Conservatives, and diametrically opposed to any innovation in stable matters, whatever their opinion may be upon other subjects.’
Here is another extract from Mayhew: ‘When the contents of the foot are compressed by the superimposed weight of the animal, or when the hoof is resting upon the ground, the quarters yield to the downward pressure, and they accordingly expand. When the burden is removed by the hoof being raised, the quarters again fly back to their original situations; the sides, therefore, being in constant motion, are entirely unsuited for the purposes to which the smith compels them. No wonder the clenches are loosened, or the shoes come off, when the nails are driven into parts hardly ever at rest. This action is important to the circulation, for the contraction still allows the arterial blood free ingress, while the expansion permits the full return of the venous current.’
Although Mayhew was formerly demonstrator of anatomy at the Royal Veterinary College, and claims a high respect and admiration for nearly all his observations, the writer is obliged to refrain from
continuing the present citation, as in what follows therein he differs diametrically from Mayhew, and he declines to follow servilely in the path even of those he most respects; but Mayhew himself could hardly object to his action in this respect when he says: ‘Veterinary surgeons display ignorance in nothing more than in being servile copyists.’ Not that the writer pretends to be a veterinary surgeon. He is only a practical man who has had a very wide and long experience amongst horses in many countries, and has been a very close observer of everything touching their feet and legs especially, and is now only offering the result of his so-gained experience for what it may be worth. Almost from the beginning of his connection with horses, he declined to consider the legs as a separate part from the body of the horse, and refused to believe that four sets of them were necessary to wear out one body, as, if such were the case, the horse would be an incomplete and niggardly gift made by Nature to man; and from the outset of his religious education, received at his mother’s knee, he has always been taught, and in his various wanderings he has never had reason to doubt, that Nature made everything complete, and nothing in vain. Hence he inferred that the horse’s body was never made stronger than his legs and feet, and that these, when understood, will be found to be ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ and in every respect harmonising with the rest of his structure, and equal to their task.
reform in shoeing is reform indeed, and the greatest respect and attention are due to it; but how few of these old discoveries, which are from time to time reinvented, are worth even the limited amount of attention which they command?’
CHAPTER VIII.
walk barefoot, and that the bottom of his foot was in every way fitted to stand all wear and tear, except the outer rim—that is, the wall or crust. He, therefore, made a shoe of very narrow iron, less than the width of the wall, which he let in, or imbedded, to the crust, without touching the sole, even on the edge; so that, in fact, the horse stood no higher after he was shod than he stood when barefooted. He urged that such a narrow piece of iron would not interfere with the natural expansion and contraction of the foot; and in this he at once went wrong, for malleable iron has no spring in it. Then, in spite of his theory, as he expressed it, he carried his shoe right round the foot into the bars, beyond where the crust ceases to be independent of them. He then got a very narrow, weak shoe, about a foot in circumference (if circumference can be applied to that which is not a complete circle); and, as he ought to have foreseen, the shoe then twisted or broke on violent exertion. Had he restricted himself to tips only, he would have had a great success from the beginning.
front half of the crust. If he had stopped at that, his narrow iron would not, in such a short length, have either twisted or fractured, and he would have made an advancement in shoeing which he has failed to bring about.
In spite of ‘Kangaroo,’ a great majority of horsey men refuse, or decline, to believe that the sole, however liberal they may be in their views towards the frog and bars, is capable of bearing weight; whereas the real fact is that, unless it takes its share of the weight, it becomes unhealthy, and a cause of uneasiness to the horse. What observant and intelligent man, who is in the habit of visiting his stable, has failed to remark that, when a horse is going to dung, he takes a preliminary step forwards, and after having finished dropping, he backs both hind feet on to the top of it? What instinct leads him to do this? The groom will tell you that the horse is in search of something soft and cooling for his feet; but, unfortunately for his theory, it happens that, so far from being soft and cooling, the matter in question is solid and warm; for a horse suffering from diarrhœa will not draw ahead and then back, and of this any one may convince himself by waiting to see. Why, then, does he go through these manœuvres? Why, simply to get, what he is otherwise deprived of, sole pressure. Soft cowdung will not afford it to him; and he will knowingly squeeze it out by getting his feet, and his weight, on something more solid.
Again, who has not seen when a horse is at
grass, that when he is not grazing he will repair to some favourite spot, which is generally stiff, neither hard nor very soft, on which to stand at rest? In dry weather he will even stale upon some place that he can find in the shade, in order to make the ground consistent to his taste and desire—that is to say, ‘stiff’—and there he will go when he is satisfied with feeding. And for what reason? Why, in search of sole pressure, which is a relief to him, but which he is generally deprived of. Can people read nothing besides print?
india-rubber the shape of the foot surface, and the horse went better—in fact, went on the road as if he were on the soft. But I had to leave them off, because the shoes were always coming off. To be sure of their merits, I tried them on another horse; the result was just the same. I should say that the hoof grows very fast when shod with these cushions.’ Why did the hoof grow fast with them? Why, because they caused sole pressure continually; there was no possible ‘stopping’ with cowdung whilst they were worn.
tough horn which the unshod colt possesses is a ‘roughing’ with which Nature sends him into the world, and which no artificial means can compete with. Why, then, should farriers ignore such an obvious fact, and direct all their perseverance and inventive powers to controvert Nature’s designs? ‘Because he who is uneducated and unable to comprehend principles can neither profit by his own experience nor abandon the paths of prejudice and custom.’
Mayhew says: ‘It is amongst the firmest physiological truths that Nature is a strict economist, and never does anything without intention’ (every one of education ought to know this without having their attention called to it by Mayhew, or in these pages); ‘that every enlargement or every depression—however insignificant it may appear to human eyes—is a permanent provision for some appointed purpose, and has its allotted use in the animal system.’ How, then, can the ignorant farrier, or anyone else, by carving the hoof to his own fancied artistical shape, be doing otherwise than upsetting Nature’s fearful and wonderful designs? ‘Man has for ages laboured to disarrange parts thus admirably adjusted. When so employed, he has only followed the example of the savage who destroys the product he is incapable of understanding. No injury, no wrong, no cruelty can be conceived, which barbarity has not inflicted on the most generous of man’s many willing slaves.’
Another writer observes that ‘appealing to the
better sentiments of the present age has been proved to be a waste of time; the better plan is to appeal to their pockets.’ Now, it is an acknowledged fact that the exercise of these cruelties costs every horse owner considerable sums yearly; and, according to Mr. Douglas, although the natural life of the horse is from thirty-five to forty years, three-fourths of them die under twelve years old, and, in the army, even sooner. Therefore, on an average, every one buys three horses where he might do with one if he were only humane to that one. This ought to be sufficient inducement to men to look to their horses’ feet, for it is through the feet that nearly all are thus early rendered useless, and through the feet to the legs. ‘One horse could wear out four pairs of feet,’ is an old proverb, and a true one, amongst horsemen; and Philip Astley justly wrote: ‘Certainly he that prevents disease does more than he that cures.’ Now diseases of the feet are very rarely cured at all; but, by the use of brake-power and a sensible system of stable treatment and shoeing they might nearly all be prevented. The Charlier shoe—defective in the beginning because it did not admit of natural expansion and contraction—was improved upon by an observant and reflective man at Melton, who reduced it to a three-quarter shoe; and this was a great stride to the good.
has stated it to be his conviction that horses shod à la Charlier will never have navicular disease.’ Neither could they get pumice foot, or other diseases, attendant on the present popular mode of shoeing. ‘Impecuniosus’ conferred a favour upon horse owners by communicating the favourable results of his experience; but conservatism, bigotry, shoeing smiths, and stable helpers were too much for him, and the Charlier shoe or tip never got into extensive use, although some people still constantly use it. The difficulty is that, in the country, scarcely any one can be found willing to put it on; but, in London, there are certain forges where it even finds warm approbation. Mr. Stevens, M.R.C.V.S., Park Lane, for one, is a strong advocate for it, and has a forge on his premises where he accommodates all comers with it. If owners in the country choose to have their own way, the country smiths would be obliged to succumb to pressure, although they would grumble and oppose the shoe to their utmost: they want no change, and they resist every innovation.
had shoes made of about one-third the usual weight, of half the width, and of rather harder iron. In putting them on, the hoof was not cut or pared, with the exception of a small groove made in what we may call the edge of the hoof; into this the shoe was inserted. By this system the horse’s hoof is on the ground, as if he were unshod; but it is protected from breaking by the thin rim of iron at its edge. We found this shoe answer admirably; but the difficulty in getting it made and put on prevented us using it on more than a few horses until quite lately. We should like to state a few instances in which it has produced wonderfully good effects, but dare not trespass on your space. We have found no horses that it does not suit; and for young horses running on the London stones, for horses with tender feet, or corns, and to prevent slipping, it is of great service. We have lately been able to use it to a larger extent, and have now some forty horses, of all sizes, from the cob to those of seventeen or eighteen hands, at work on the London stones and country roads, shod in this way. These, sir, are facts which your readers can verify. From a business point of view it is also important: the use of these shoes would, in London alone, by preventing the laming and wearing out of horses, save many thousands of pounds every year.’
persevere for half-a-dozen years, until they were able to establish generally in their stables, under difficulties, a system which their good sense, in the first place, and the experience they gradually gained, in the second, told them was highly economical for them and comfortable for their horses. It is not every farmer that owns forty horses; but in these days of co-operation nothing could be easier than for several farmers to agree among themselves to patronise jointly the first forge in each district, the owner of which would consent to meet their views. Let them, in fact, strike against the farriers, or make a lock-out. It only wants union among themselves, but they must first be converted from their own grooviness in respect to horse shoeing.
The Lincolnshire farmers were obliged, only in November last, to form a society for the suppression of the administration of poisonous drugs by their servants to their horses; one of them stating at the first meeting that, first and last, he had lost over thirty horses through this odious, but almost universal, practice. Perhaps these same gentlemen would excuse the suggestion that at their meetings shoeing might also be profitably discussed.
A remarkable discussion on shoeing, the heads of which may be appropriately introduced here, took place at the meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture in. 1878. Mr. Russell started by stating that the safest way was to let the hind feet be bare, and to shoe the fore feet with tips, or crescents of iron, that only cover the toe. Dr. Hunt, curiously
he seems to have overlooked the economical facts that, although in this way his horse-shoeing cost him more by the year than formerly, he had less to pay to the veterinary surgeon, that he got more work out of his horses, and that they lived longer, or were likely to live longer (as he had only then had two years’ experience). If this be taken into account, his forge was, however indirectly, a great commercial success. If he had not found it to answer, so shrewd a man would not have carried it on, nor would he have ventured to speak on the subject in so independent and authoritative a manner on such a special occasion.
CHAPTER IX.
unshod horses galloping over the softest or roughest kind of ground in turn (say Dartmoor, for instance) may bear witness to. Such horses only roughly pick their way when at full gallop: they lift their feet high, and let them come down where chance may, in detail, direct them. The weight of the horse is only partially transmitted to the arched sole by the elasticity of other parts of the foot.
of elasticity, expansion, and contraction to obviate all danger from concussion.
each becomes dead and falls off in flakes, the growth downwards of the new horn pushing off the old in turn.’ This being so, all paring of either sole or frog is not only uncalled for but highly detrimental. To such of us as have been in the habit of thinking of the horse’s hoof as merely a homogeneous block of horn, without any particular architectural design, the lucid descriptions given by Mr. Douglas must impart a new light. Some amongst us cannot fail to ask themselves whether all these perfectly designed and delicate, although strong, arrangements were so ordered merely to have them thrown out of use by scorching, stiffening, and covering them with rigid iron, and lacerating and compressing with nails the delicate tubes through which flows the fluid on which the crust depends for its health and vitality?
from a ‘scoop-toed rolling-motion shoe,’ if there be anything in a name—which is to be doubted in this case at least. Another, the ‘centennial’ shoe, is described as follows: ‘This shoe is made of steel, and is well concaved on the ground surface. The bars are made so as to fit upon the bars of the foot, and bear weight as the unshod hoof does in a state of nature, preventing bruises in the heels and quarter cracks. I have tested this shoe on horses that were quite sore and lame, the shoe being made of cast steel, the bars being sprung down from the heel to their points on the ground surface about one half-inch; this will soften and mellow the jar. The shoe, being well tempered, will allow the bars to spring with the horse’s weight, and will be found one of the best devices possible to soften and relieve the effects of concussion when the horse is tender of foot, as well as to quicken the action in trotting, leaving the frog free and unimpeded to perform its important functions of cushioning the foot and shielding the sensitive parts from injury.’
be better than anything else, ‘even in the case of horses that had had their feet abused for a series of years.’ This book, however, coming, as it does, from a farrier of forty years’ experience, contains noteworthy remarks. Great stress is laid on the importance of paring the crust only, leaving the frog and sole to exfoliate of their own accord, and also taking the greatest care to pare down the crust perfectly level on all sides, so that the foot may stand quite upright. ‘If we wish to examine a perfect foot, such as Nature made it, it is generally necessary to find one that has never been shod; for the common mode of shoeing is so frequently destructive, that we seldom meet with a horse whose feet have not lost, in some degree, their original form, and this deviation from their natural shape is generally proportioned to the length of time they have worn shoes. From this circumstance, writers on farriery have been led to form various opinions respecting the most desirable form for a horse’s foot; but had an ever provident Nature been consulted, this variety of opinion, it seems to me, would never have existed.’
than all his far-fetched inventions. On the other hand, it is refreshing to find him speak thus: ‘The practice of hot fitting and clipping’—that is, raising a clip on the toe, and sometimes also on both quarters—‘is very destructive. Burning the sole will, in time, partially destroy the sensitive laminae, and impair the membranous lining underneath the coffin bone, as well as close the pores of the horn, causing the roof to become hard, dry and brittle. It also impedes, as a necessary consequence, the healthy growth of the hoof.’
‘The advocates of hot fitting present many specious reasons for the furtherance of this practice. It is alleged that shoes cannot be fitted so rapidly nor as closely by any means other than that of hot fitting; and this is generally true, for, by this means, the hoof is burned to correspond with the inequalities which occur on the surface of the shoe, until the latter is thoroughly imbedded in the horn. On the other hand, however, this fusing of the horn is in opposition to its right growth and operation, and is the prolific source of many evils and abuses.’
Although a veterinary surgeon certifies to the correctness of the anatomical descriptions contained in the book, we may premise that he does not guarantee everything else; or we should scarcely meet with such a passage as this: ‘The shoe should ordinarily be perfectly flat on the ground-wearing part, but is to be worn concave on the surface next the foot, else it will be apt to produce lameness by pressing on the sole. I have shown that, in a sound foot, the
sole is always concave; and it might be supposed that it cannot possibly receive any pressure from a flat shoe. But when a horse is exerting himself, either in galloping or drawing burdens, the sudden action of the animal’s weight causes the laminae to gradually lengthen, and suffer the coffin bone to press on the sole; its concavity and elasticity allow it to descend and expand, and that gradual yielding must materially endanger the sole by a violent contact with the shoe, were it made otherwise than hollow.’
work.’ One precaution to be taken when applying the shoe is to pare lightly the bottom of the crust first of all. A whitish line, which marks the inside of the crust, will then be found; and this white line must be preserved intact, with just a little bit to spare, when cutting the groove. Mr. Stevens, M.K.C.V.S., Park Lane, London, sends, for sixpence, a pamphlet, giving instructions; he also keeps ready-made shoes, &c., concerning all which the pamphlet furnishes information. A correspondent who shoes all his horses à la Charlier, a stranger to myself, writes: ‘I live in the country. I have an ardent disciple in the farrier, who shoes beautifully. I really don’t think the shoes he puts on my horses weigh more than one quarter those made by his neighbours do. I am glad to say, too, that it has been a fine thing for him in business; many of the neighbouring gentry employ him to shoe on this method. A horse can back a load on any ordinary road without calking, if you let him stand on his feet.’
(which all would reach, if they tried), they might be led to reflect, and ask themselves whether this was the full extent of improvement they could arrive at. ‘Impecuniosus’ stopped short here; but the American farmers pushed the thing still further by doing away with even this small protection on the hind feet. At this point they also made a stand, apparently overawed by their presumption or stupefied by their success. They were unaware, or unable fully to appreciate the fact that Nature was smiling benignly upon their efforts in the right direction, even when they were brought face to face with the rewards she was so plainly giving them at each advancing step towards perfection.
occasionally to a suitable length and shape. In Ireland donkeys are worked unshod in draught and over macadamised roads, even over loose broken stone; and Mayhew gives an illustration showing a donkey’s overgrown toe turned upward like a half moon from the want of care in keeping it rasped back.
Only last December a correspondent in a contemporary referred to this same illustration and to these donkeys. He says that lately, when he was in Ireland, he saw the donkeys being worked unshod; and not only had the hoof not been worn away, but, on the contrary, it had outgrown the wear and tear of work, the toe having become turned up, and requiring shortening exactly (as he says) as shown in Mayhew’s ilustration. He says: ‘Certainly the roads in that part of Ireland are calculated to cause the greatest amount of wear and tear.’ In other countries the toe is kept trimmed, and this is necessary for the comfort of the animals. Yet the laziness of the Irish owners in leaving the superfluous horn affords a convincing proof that the toe will outgrow all demands upon it, even on roads that ‘are certainly calculated to cause the greatest amount of wear and tear.’
What further proof can be needed that Nature has fully provided for every part of the hoof? A protection of iron, even in its most mitigated form, is only a mistake. Some may say that this is all very well for the donkey, but that it is quite another affair with the horse; and this remark was
actually made to the writer by an Irish clergyman. Such an argument can only be fished up from the depths of bigotry. Those who urge it would also deny that donkeys could go unshod, but for the fact that they see them doing so, and successfully. Now, in England, donkeys are shod; and why? Only as an affair of routine. One of the chief arguments—in fact, the sheet-anchor—of those who will not allow the equine species to go barefooted is ‘our moist climate and hard roads.’ Ireland is rather ahead of us in having a moister climate, and the roads, as described, are in no way better than ours; so the point of departure of nearly all sticklers for the necessity of shoes will bear no more investigation than the puerile and futile chain of reasoning with which they follow it up.
To such as are open to conviction, it will be evident, therefore, that our donkeys in England would gain by leaving off shoes, and that their owners would at the same time be richer. Why should this not hold good also in regard to the horse? The statement that he is less fitted for it by nature will stand neither argument nor practical experiment, should the latter be made with intelligence and a desire to succeed.
Can any one really believe that the animal which is endowed with the greater speed and power should have worse feet than his inferior in both respects? Nonsense is no name for such a creed; it is something far worse. Mayhew says: ‘Nature has in vain laboured to instruct the waywardness of conceit;
mankind could afford to endure all evils before it could afford to question the perfectibility of mortal invention. There is no accounting for incongruities when men, deserting reason, consent to adopt routine as a guide. Veterinary surgeons attribute to shoeing all the evils with which the hoof is affected. Veterinary surgeons are somewhat slow in adopting new ideas; but seem, with the firmness and tenacity ignorance displays towards a favourite superstition, to love and cling to the practices in which they have been educated.’ Some people cling to the superstition that nailing a horseshoe on the door keeps out the witches. The shoe does, certainly, less harm on the door than on the horse’s foot; but to nail it on the latter is a superstition utterly unworthy of the civilisation and intelligence of the English nation in the nineteenth century. Future historians will place upon record that an appeal had to be made to us, in the year of grace 1880, to abandon the use of artificial foundations tacked on to a living creation of God; and these historians will not fail to throw further shame on us by pointing out the fact that semi-civilised nations, with whose customs we were conversant, were able to work the horse harder than we did without any protection to his feet.
In the retreat of the French army from Moscow, the horses lost all their shoes before they reached the Vistula. Yet they found their way to France over rough, hard, frozen ground.
CHAPTER X.
During the mutiny in India many of our cavalry horses went unshod, because they could not get shod, and they never went better in their lives.
In the ‘Morning Advertiser’ of July 18 last, the special military correspondent at the Cape gives an interesting account of a ride that he made with irregular cavalry on a raid. He says: ‘Few of the men have their horses shod in front; some do not shoe at all;’ and he remarks that, in his excursion, they had to go over ‘sheets of polished, wet, slippery stone in the torrent beds, making one wonder how our unshod horses could keep their feet.’ It is worthy of remark that this was only a few days before the battle of Ulundi, in which these horses took such an active part. In fact, they saw the whole war through; and, on August 9, we find the special war correspondent of the ‘Daily News’ reporting of these same animals that ‘the
constant work they have had naturally keeps them devoid of superfluous flesh; but, for all this, they are as hard as nails, and good in the wind.’ All through the reports on the war, not a complaint was made as to these horses falling lame. Surely there must be something in this. Sheets of wet, slippery rock, and rolling stones in river beds, would be calculated to try the hoofs to the utmost; yet in the pursuit of the Zulus, when they fled at Ulundi, these ‘ponies’ (from 14½ hands downwards) were able, we are told, to follow miles further than the shod horses.
collier, a third a groom, and so on throughout the dozen. Hitherto tradition and routine have been permitted to guide farriers in their wondrous ways of horse-shoeing; consequently it is a question whether, in following the manners and customs of their forefathers, they are more to be blamed than the general public.’ By ‘the general public’ it is presumable that Mr. Douglas meant the generality of horse owners. The general public knows nothing about the shoeing of horses.
down hill, without a brake on the wheels. Even then he will do better than a shod horse. Here is an extract from the ‘Daily Telegraph’ of this year, January 28, in an article on the weather then being experienced: ‘As the frost had not given way, the wicked dew turned into glass as it fell in the hard roads, beaten and worn smooth by the slipping hoofs of the pitiable, but not much pitied, horses. Many severe falls were consequent on the slippery state of the carriage-ways and foot-paths; and traffic was much retarded in the busier thoroughfares of the City. Those of the West-end were, comparatively speaking, deserted; for nobody having horses of any value would willingly have had them out at such a time.’ One lady told the writer that she could not use her carriage ‘because her horses could not stand roughing, as their hoofs were too tender and delicate to bear the insertion of nails oftener than once a month.’ This lady only expressed what hundreds of others felt.
least expected. Even the Charlier shoe, although it will not pick up snow (the facility for doing which is increased by lifting the foot higher from the ground, when cogs and calks are used), is not perfect upon glassy streets. We have seen that Mr. Bowditch condemned the use of both toe and heel calks, as a general rule; yet when he rode his mare upon a frozen lake he turned down ‘a small toecalk.’ He had no calk behind because the heels were bare, and so there was no danger of slipping on their part; neither would there be any reason to fear that the bare toe would act otherwise.
veterinary surgeon. But, perhaps, he was shoeing to order.
It has been well said that ‘ladies are not bigger slaves to fashion than are modern horse owners.’
In a paper dedicated to agriculturists it has been maintained that horseshoes are an absolute necessity, but that ‘the difficulty in riding or driving through the London streets arises from the variety of pavements in use. From Westminster to the Bank, horses have to travel over macadam, asphalte, wood, and granite. The shoe adapted for traffic on one kind of pavement ill suits another.’ But is it so? Ask Mr. Smither. ‘If we had a uniform kind of pavement, a shoe for universal (?) use would be quickly invented. The ingenuity of man would devise horseshoes to travel over glass, were glass the only pavement in use.’ This is an insult to the common sense of its readers. It has been widely, and for a long time, proved that the naked foot of the horse is as much at home on one kind of hard road as on another, and can pass over all of them alternately without wearing out, or inconveniencing the horse, and that on none of them will he slip, or on wet grass either.
In Mexico, Yucatan, Honduras (both British and Spanish), Guatemala, San Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the United States of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil, horses, mules, and donkeys are worked over every description of hard roads, most of them exceedingly rough, carrying very heavy packs from the back country
down to the seaboard, and in some cases making a journey of several hundreds of miles, and they load back again; yet they never wear out their hoofs. The writer speaks from experience; for it has been his lot to own and work hundreds of animals at a time in more than one of these countries; and if shoeing could have helped him in the slightest he would most certainly have resorted to it. No man could see four or five hundred animals incapacitated from work without seeking such a simple remedy; but it was never wanted, and many years of experience of this kind have naturally convinced him that horses work better, and can travel further, without shoes than with them.
horse resting with the toe of one foot, and bearing with the heel of the shoe of that foot (especially should the shoe be calked) upon the coronet of the opposite one. Hence unshod horses can with difficulty get quittor, neither do they. An unshod horse ‘feels his feet,’ and knows what he is doing with them; so he scarcely knows what it is to overreach himself; and even if he does such a thing, no evil consequences are ever noticed, because the horn cannot inflict injury like iron. For sandcrack and seedy toe there are no names in the above-cited countries, and no one can bring the natives to understand that such diseases exist. If you suggest corns to them they laugh in your face, and no wonder.
Mr. Dalziel says: ‘Corns on the human foot are practically known to most people, being one of the unpleasant and unnecessary attendants on civilisation, for they came into fashion with boots and shoes. So with corns on the foot of the horse.’ Mayhew says: ‘Spavin, splint, or ringbone are no more the legitimate consequences of equine existence than noads and anchylosis are the natural inheritance of human beings.’ By illegitimate treatment ninety-nine hundredths of the diseases of the feet and legs are caused—shoeing being the most to blame.
CHAPTER XI.
Brittle hoof is so common that all perhaps are alive to some of the vexations it causes. But only when it gets very advanced is it taken in hand, and it is then treated by some kind of ‘hoof ointment,’ joined to ‘stoppings’ of various kinds, with a blister, mercurial ointment, or a stimulating liniment applied over the coronet. The first two only aggravate the disease.
Mr. Douglas says: ‘The rules for keeping a horse’s feet healthy, and preserving the horn, are to use nothing but water to the hoofs—either as a cleanser or an ornamenter; and never allow horses to stand upon litter during the day. Grease or tar, by shutting up the pores in the horn, prevent the natural moisture from reaching the surface out-wardly, and the air from circulating inwards—consequences which act upon the horn with ruinous results.’ Lieutenant-Colonel Burdett has, within the last few weeks, expressed his opinion of grease
in somewhat similar terms. Another equally baneful habit is ‘stopping’ the hoofs with hot greasy mixtures or cowdung, under the idea of softening them or cooling them. This idea works wrong end first; for stopping and greasing heat the horn, whilst soft horn is not desirable; tough, dense, springy horn is the right kind of thing, just such as Nature supplies when she is not interfered with. As to the blister, mercurial ointment, or stimulating embrocations (which latter the stableman will call ‘oils’—a name that has always carried great weight with it amongst his class), in the words of Mr. Fearnley, ‘all they can do is to cause a splutter of vitality in the part.’ What is the use of a mere splutter of vitality? That which is wanted is a renewal of vigorous and lasting vitality, not dependent on the irritation caused by the continual application of drugs.
scurfy appearance it had hitherto presented, to assume one of plumpness, roundness, fulness, and glossiness, which appearance shows that some important change is taking place. It (the coronary band) is now becoming restored to a healthy condition, and fit and able to secrete healthy horn, which it will straightway set about doing. The exercise on hard roads should now be daily increased—the application of the wet flannel still be continued.
The groom will not like the look of the coronary band, as he is so unaccustomed to look upon a healthy one. But he will be still more disgusted when he sees, a few days later on, that the shiny appearance which he so much distrusts is extending itself down the hoof, and then he will be ‘sure as them feet is a rottin’ off.’ Grooms have been heard to say so, with the addition of a few words not exactly complimentary to their masters.
The coronary band has been restored to health, and the proper secreting power has been recovered, the removal of the shoe having permitted freedom of circulation, which has been further encouraged and stimulated by exercise, whilst heat has been kept down by the cold water. This plentiful supply of healthy blood is assimilated by the coronary band, in its passage through which it is by ‘the wonderful chemistry of Nature’ converted into plasma, which afterwards becomes hard horn. The treatment must be continued until the shiny horn reaches the ground.
Brittle horn cannot be satisfactorily repaired;
it must grow out, and be replaced by horn of an opposite character, and this is the way it is done. The disease may again be produced by the same course of action that first brought it on. When this is resumed, and the horse again begins to suffer, they say that he has never been cured.
succession of very steep rough hills or “tors,” and rugged “combes,” strewed with granite rock and stones. Yet in spite of all, besides the bogs and chronic state of rain, the herds of ponies gallop fearlessly along the rough steep sides of the combes, or down and up. It is a pretty sight to see them, especially in the spring, with the foals by their sides.’
Mayhew says of the shod horse: ‘As the shoe alone rests upon the earth, of course the hoof lacks needful attrition.’ The attrition or friction caused by exercising the unshod animal on hard roads is salutary to the whole foot, because it acts as a natural stimulant to circulation and secretion, not causing a ‘mere splutter of vitality ’ that is of no lasting worth, but making the horn ‘to thicken and accommodate itself to its task, like the skin of a blacksmith’s hand.’ Youatt says: ‘The horn answers to the skin of the human foot.’ Magistrates examine the hands of vagrants: and, by their hardness or softness, judge whether they have bonâ-fide ‘frozen-out gardeners’ before them, or professional beggars. Gardeners and navvies neither wear gloves nor pad their spade handles, although the bottom or forward hand comes down and slides on a roughly riveted iron strap. The hoof of the horse cannot be looked upon as being of a more delicate nature than a man’s hand.
Besides the advantage of attrition being gained by the removal of the shoes, expansion and contraction which play so prominent a part in the general
economy of the whole foot, and its maintenance in health, also lend their aid in producing sound horn. Without the removal of shoes the ‘water cure’ cannot be a complete success. Mayhew says: ‘The heels of the horse may become rigid and wired in by the fixing powers exercised by the nails of the shoe. But remove these nails, allow the foot that motion which is needful to the health, and its internal structures may recover their lost functions. The veterinary mind was, however, slow to recognise so plain a rule. Like all Nature’s laws, the truth necessitated not that show of mastery in which the ignorant especially delight.’
The writer has already confessed his inability to agree with Mayhew in everything he says; and he thinks that here he is unjust to veterinary surgeons. There is, perhaps, not one among them who would not order the removal of shoes oftener than he now does, if he could be sure that his order would be attended to. Owners rebel, up to the last point, against what will evidently throw the horse out of work for some considerable length of time. They prefer ‘patching up.’
It is not sufficiently acknowledged, or understood, that veterinary surgeons have to deal with people who generally want their ‘say’ in all cases of lameness. In other matters they are more tractable; but every one thinks he knows something about lameness, and almost every one tries to shirk what every practitioner would recommend, if he conveniently could—rest. But, knowing, as they do,
what I have attempted to explain, these gentlemen (in practice) find it expedient to order ‘mild’ or ‘sweating’ blisters to be applied, with, perhaps, an intimation that they will have to be repeated; and, during the interims, they give the groom a bottle of ‘oils,’ because they know that this keeps him contented and in subjection; and thus they, justifiably, obtain rest for the horse. This rest is what they are after; but it won’t, by itself, cure brittle hoof. When Mayhew speaks of the ‘show of mastery in which the ignorant especially delight,’ the ‘ignorant’ is plainly meant to be applied to the owner—or rather to the groom, for he is mostly master. It may be advisable to keep these kinds of things ‘straight,’ and not make oneself misunderstood on both sides.
the brittle crust being unable to retain its hold of the sole, which then becomes depressed; and, as at the same time the laminæ, partaking of the general disorder of the crust, of which they form the interior, are unable to maintain the coffin bone in due suspension, and are forced to allow it to follow the descent of the sole, the horse becomes past cure, and should be destroyed—or, rather, finish being murdered.
down upon a whitlow. Friction against a hard substance brings about this extra thickness and hardness; the young ladies who handle silk, woollen or cotton textures all day long in shops have soft hands. Like begets like; and hard roads make hard feet for horses, in spite of all superstition to the contrary. The writer has more than a quarter of a century of experience and practice with unshod horses in large numbers. He has, therefore, no theory about the matter, constructed, as may perhaps be imagined, upon the quotations he has so freely used from the writings of scientific, professional, and practical authorities.
CHAPTER XII.
The letter of ‘Aberlorna’[1] seems to render it advisable to introduce here some remarks, which were only intended to be made later on, as to the amount of work to be first given to a horse who has had the full shoe replaced either by a tip or by nothing at all, and also as to small precautions useful to take when making the change.
It is prudent to allow the shoes then on to wear themselves out, as this gives the frog, sole, and bars a chance of somewhat recovering from their last mutilation, which mutilation may have been greater or lesser; as, fortunately, now-a-days some of the smiths do not cut away as much horn as was
previously the universal rule. On this account some horses are better prepared than others for the change. Some, again, have naturally stronger and better formed hoofs than others; and all these circumstances weigh. What work one horse would be able easily to perform might be quite too much for another. At any rate, to ride a horse, on the second day after putting on tips, twenty miles ‘over a road covered with new metal, in a simply abominable state,’ is, without doubt, a hazardous proceeding, and one courting a failure for the trial (not intentionally so, of course). Twenty miles at the present season over the road described is, in fact, a day’s work for any horse.
It is not easy, having regard to the various possible existing combinations of the aforesaid circumstances, to lay down any rule. Discretion and intelligence here come into play; it is astonishing what a wide difference there is between people in this respect. Some will carry things to the opposite extreme, and go poking about only a mile or two daily, for weeks, on the grass by the side of the road—or even in a field: something between the two is the correct thing—moderate distances, on hard smooth roads, for a few days.
In the case of ‘Aberlorna’ all we know is that his horse had ‘naturally rather flat and tender feet;’ and that, after this rough trip, ‘he went tender; but this appears to be wearing away in a great degree, and it is surprising how hard and firm the soles of his feet have got.’
As this gentleman owns a number of horses, the question must be of considerable pecuniary importance to him; and if, by an indiscreet step, he had injured his horse, he would have been likely to become disgusted, and have desisted, and so have thrown away a chance of benefiting his whole stable; and, besides, the farrier would have turned the laugh, which he got up at the mere idea of such a thing, unpleasantly against him. It is to be hoped that he will do a little less at the next trial, and then he will not find his horse ‘going tender.’
A gentleman writes privately: ‘I once rode a hack for six weeks, in comparatively dry weather, with only tips, the heels being quite bare. The heels grew and expanded as you describe, and nothing could be pleasanter to horse and rider; but no sooner did a wet time set in than I was obliged to revert to the full shoe—at least, I thought so.’ (!) The naïveté herein apparent could hardly be surpassed. This gentleman received the highest education that England affords, and took his degree. No one can ‘spot’ him, so there is no breach of confidence in divulging the fact that he is a clergyman of the Church of England. Yet even a man of this calibre was not proof against a popular delusion.
To come back again on the question of shoeing ‘hot’ or ‘cold,’ which ‘Aberlorna’ has revived. It is well known that thereon veterinary surgeons differ. In these articles one veterinary surgeon has been cited who was intensely opposed to hot shoeing; as also an American ‘practical horse-shoer,’ the author
of a work on ‘Scientific Horse-shoeing,’ professing forty years’ experience; and an American farmer who had felt obliged to shoe his own horses ‘for his own protection ’—three differently interested classes of men who were, as such, purposely quoted.
A prize essay does not necessarily carry everything before it merely because it is a prize essay. Such essays are sometimes written with a view only of obtaining a prize; and ‘coaches’ tell us that, in order to do so, they must coincide with the views of the examiners. It is not pretended, however, that the essay in question was engineered on this principle: it is much more likely that it was a thoroughly conscientious production; but doctors differ.
An independent, practical essay on the horse, written by Lieutenant-Colonel Burdett, is appearing, since January last, in the ‘Richmond and Twickenham Times.’ Here are some extracts from the gallant colonel’s writings: ‘One of the first considerations of an owner or driver of a horse should be the feet and legs of his horse; for, should anything be the matter with either, the animal should not be put to any description of work; for, if he is, he is sure to suffer, and in many cases most acutely.’… ‘The foot of the horse is a most complex and elaborate piece of machinery, and perfectly adapted to the work it is intended to perform; but our artificial assistance, so far from preserving, often cripples, and frequently totally ruins it.’… ‘The natural sole of a horse’s
foot is almost impenetrable, and so hard and strong that it protects the inner or sensible sole from all harm. In many instances (though I am glad to say not so much in the present time as formerly) farriers were in the habit of paring away the natural sole, and making what they called “a clean foot,” and cut so thin that the thumb could almost leave an impression. Consequently, when the horse was required to go over a new made road, either gravel or macadam, he would naturally go “tender;” whereas if the sole had been left intact, and the loose, rough parts taken off with the drawing knife, the sole of the horse’s foot would have been protected.’ It is disagreeable, and will be thought presumptuous, for the writer to feel himself obliged to differ from the colonel, and to state that experience has taught him that even these loose, rough flakes, of either frog or sole, should never be touched: they are going through the natural process of exfoliation, and should be left to complete that process spontaneously, and without any help from the knife.
used to give the hoof a smart and clean appearance. Instead of that, as soon as the horse is brought out, if broken straws from the stall are not adhering to it (generally the case), in less than ten minutes it is covered with dust, which adheres to it, and stops all chance of circulation of air, which is so necessary to the well-being of the foot. The hoof is naturally porous; and if coated with grease the circulation of air is stopped, and the foot naturally injured, and there is a great probability of engendering disease.’ These quotations are taken from the paper mentioned, in its issues of January 17 and 31, 1880.
Some months since a contemporary stated: ‘We hear that a new horseshoe has been adopted by the North Metropolitan Tramways Company since they commenced to keep their own horses. The stud of the company numbers over 2,000 animals; and, with the view of easing the laborious travelling of the horses over stony roads, the new patent horseshoe of Mr. A. Seeley, of the United States, has been tried. This shoe weighs 1¼lb., or less than half the usual weight’ (The Charlier three-quarter shoe weighs five ounces).’ It is fastened on when cold, and, being without “clips” or calks, the frog, or centre of the horse’s foot, is allowed to rest firmly on the ground. The cost of shoeing under the new system is about ninepence, instead of one shilling, a week per horse.’
The Seeley Company now refer in their prospectus to tramway and other companies in the chief towns in England as to their success in working
horses with a cold-fitted shoe. It is not to be lost sight of that nearly a score of these companies employ each thousands of horses; and yet leading authorities have pronounced opinions utterly at variance with each other on the use of the shoe. But doctors always have differed. The statement that fifty cold-fitted shoes are lost to every hot one, certainly could not be substantiated; they stand at no disadvantage at all in this respect; the nails hold better in horn that has not been rendered brittle by scorching. The tramways have now been using them for nearly two years, and that looks as if they kept in their places pretty well. In Spain, where cold shoeing is universal, and forges very wide apart, shoes keep on until they wear out.
Cold fitting by no means entails any necessity for ‘fitting the foot to the shoe.’ The shoe, whilst hot, is forged to the correct size and shape of the foot. The paring of the crust to fit the flat surface of the cold iron takes longer than burning it down with a hot shoe, and the paring of the surface on the bottom is the only ‘fitting the foot to the shoe’ that has to be done when the latter is of the correct pattern. When it is not, hot and cold fitting stand just equal.
Another objection to the fancied advantage of gaining such very close apposition by burning in, is that the horse thus often gets shod too tightly, and every one knows that this is injurious to the animal; although it is not every one that is fully alive to the great amount of misery and disorder it entails.
‘Aberlorna’ says that, ‘he believes no ill effects ever result from hot shoeing, except when done by ignorant men, who should be anywhere but in a shoeing forge.’ In such a forge, ten miles from his own residence, there is a man so ignorant of the nature of a horse’s foot, that he laughed at the idea of his being able to go on the roads with only tips, and was, afterwards, ‘quite surprised that he had not broken down on the way home after he was shod.’
Cold shoeing is gradually gaining in favour with practical men in spite of prize essays which condemn it. There is one passage in the said extract that the writer is unable to comment upon, because he fails to see any meaning in the assertion that ‘two surfaces are caused to correspond, friction is set up between them, and their separation not so easy.’ There may, perhaps, be some argument concealed under this verbosity. We are told that ‘language was given to man to enable him to disguise his thoughts.’
The extract given from the essay is of a very ‘groovey’ character otherwise.
The Seeley shoe, of which mention has been made, is a plain, light, machine-made shoe, without calks or clips, seated or bevelled on the ground surface, as Professor Coleman was the first to advocate. The chief advantage it possesses is that of being made of iron so ductile that the shoe can be altered in shape whilst cold. It is, in fact, meant to be always applied cold; and this is the only difference there is between it and any ordinary light
shoe made on professor Coleman’s principle. It is not a ‘patent’ shoe.
At the beginning of March, as ‘Will Watch’[2] says, farming operations are too backward to allow of reducing the work of farm horses sufficiently to do away at once with all iron on their feet; neither did the writer intend, for many reasons, to incite the owners of such hard-worked animals to make such an abrupt change. A gradual mode of proceeding will allow the horses to keep on at their work; and it will not cause so much apprehension to the owner nor so much opposition and eternal grumbling, or ‘kicking over the traces’ on the part of the carter, especially when he has such a handsome inducement held out to him, in case of success, as ‘half the saving in the blacksmith’s bill,’ which this gentleman so spiritedly offers him.
Unfortunately, as he remarks in his letter, farriers do not, as a rule, ‘care to know much about the Charlier shoe,’ and this has already been pointed out in these articles. Yet one gentleman has written that he has made of one ‘an ardent disciple,’ and that ‘he shoes beautifully’ on this system; also that he finds it to bring grist to his mill. In some places where farmers could carry out by union what has been before suggested, a man might be found who would be willing to go into the thing. However, where the difficulty about the Charlier system is insurmountable, there is another road out of the wood, which ‘Aberlorna’ appears to have already hit upon,
although it was intended, in due course, to have been demonstrated.
On farms or other large establishments where numbers of horses are kept, and no spare ones, for the especial purpose of earning their living and that of their owners, an ordinary tip (the lunette of La Fosse), covering only the front half of the foot, may be used with good success. Any blacksmith can put this on, although ‘Aberlorna’ tells us that they laugh at the idea. This tip should be light, and narrow in the web, as the sole does not want to be covered, and a light tip will wear as long as is necessary before it wants renewal, for we must recollect that the feet grow faster with tips than with full shoes. The nails should also be light and fine, and only four of them used. There is no danger in driving them into the toe, as many farriers imagine. Mayhew is very explicit thereon; and if farriers only had a slight knowledge of a hoof they would be aware that the horn is thicker and stouter at the toe, and that it also grows faster there than elsewhere.
What we may call the heels of the tip (although they do not reach the heels of the horse) should be eased off on the ground surface in thickness, with the file, at their extremities, so that they may not press unduly at their points upon the crust. The heels of the horse must not have even the slightest paring taken off them; but the seat of the tip must be pared down in the usual manner, because if the toe should be raised at the same time that the heel is lowered, too much work would be given to the back sinews.
‘Impecuniosus,’ a thoroughly practical man, begs us to observe that all horses will ‘go short’ for a day or two the first time that they wear tips. This is because they feel strange on first having their heels let out of a vice.
It is well to go ‘slow and sure;’ therefore it would be advisable for a man to experiment upon one or two of his horses, say one with flat, weak, tender, shelly, brittle hoofs, and the other with what he considers as the stoutest in his stable. The possibility is that he would find at the end of a month that the weak-footed horse would apparently have derived the most benefit from the treatment, although theory might lead him to suppose that the contrary would be the case.
The tips should, of course, be applied cold. They can be made whilst hot to the exact shape and size. To facilitate and expedite this (and so to avoid lifting up the foot and cooling the iron two or three times), after the crust on the toe has been pared and rasped into proper form, the outline can be easily scratched with a fine, sharp nail, either on the floor, if it should be smooth enough, or else on a piece of board on which the horse is made to stand whilst one of his fore-feet is held up by a groom. When it is the outline of a hind foot that has to be traced, the fore foot on the same side should be held up, because the horse cannot so easily shift about the foot that is being traced if he is obliged to bear his weight on two legs on the same side to do so; not that there is much difficulty, or time required, in
running a nail round the front half of a well-trimmed hoof, except with fidgety horses, and some horses are inclined to be fidgety in a forge, which is not much to be wondered at. These are minutiæ, but they are worth while being insisted upon by the owner in person. There is no necessity to inform a farrier that there is an intention of endeavouring to dispense with his services at some future date; if things go well he will discover that in time, and you will have spared his feelings for some weeks.
Should the horse or two thus experimented upon be found to do well, another couple or so could be put through the same treatment, and the first tried might leave off the tips on the hind feet on the second shoeing; on the third the front tips might be discarded. In this manner some people might be six months in getting through their whole stable, but they would never have any great amount of anxiety on their minds, especially as they can always revert, at any moment they please (as the clergyman cited did, although without the slightest cause, except ‘funk,’ for so doing), to the full shoe. No one is incited to hurry or flurry himself over it, but, on the contrary, every one is advised not to rush at things. By so doing he will lose little or no work of his animals, at the same time that all those who surround them will take the change in a kindlier manner.
There is one observation to be made, which attentive readers will have already thought out for themselves. Although the foot will have greatly
benefited all round by the use of tips, the toe will not have received as much benefit as the other parts, both on account of want of attrition and from having been pierced by nails; still it will be found to have made an improvement through the freer circulation of blood, &c. The toe, as will be seen, has its fibres in a more slanting position than the remainder of the crust, and a leverage is brought to bear upon it every time the horse lifts his foot, which leverage the other parts have not to bear. Nature therefore has made it the thickest, strongest, and fastest growing of all.
On first discarding the tips the horn on the toe may be found to chip away until the nail holes grow out. This may in great measure be avoided by not driving the nails far and straight up into the horn. It is not necessary so to do to hold on a light tip. The points of the nails can generally be brought out low down, and when the iron is thrown aside, the edge of the hoof must be well rounded off with a rasp, which will do away with nearly all chipping. It is best always to keep the hoofs of unshod horses slightly rounded off on their edges. When this is done, once a week or so, no further trimming is necessary.
The shod horse has to dig his toes into the ground to start a load; but it will be found that as he gradually gets unshod he will also gradually lose this habit, because, as he goes on ‘feeling his feet,’ he will find out by instinct the natural way of using them, which is on the flat, and then the leverage and strain on the toe will be lessened, and the chipping
away will thereby be also greatly reduced. These facts, although they may not be found mentioned in any one of those prize essays that are written in the ‘follow-my-leader style’ which ‘Impecuniosus’ so much deprecates, may be found useful for nervous men to know and keep in mind. Some people conjure up fancied difficulties. Fancy and theory have helped to bring our horses’ feet and legs to their present state, which the generality of people find to be a very unsatisfactory one.
There are countries possessing vast tracts of grasscovered plains, on which horses are extensively bred, which from their great abundance are there of low value. The steppes of Russia, the grass runs of Australia, the prairies of some of the Anglo-American States, the savannahs of Uruguay and of the Argentine Republic are instances of such. In the last-mentioned, ‘fine colts, from three to five years old, can be bought at from 1l. to 4l., and mares at from 4s. to 20s.’ These horses, which are unshod, are those upon whose backs the ‘Grauchos’ perform their well-known skilful feats of ‘lassoing,’ &c., when cattle-driving—the unshod horse being endowed with an activity and sureness of foot that renders him highly valuable for their purposes.
A gentleman writing in a contemporary, on the subject of cattle-driving, says: ‘In Australia, in wet weather, an unshod horse is both a pleasant and a safe mount. Many a roll over I have had after cattle on a shod horse, when the country was soft above and hard below ’—as some English race-courses
and hunting countries often are—‘which would not have occurred with a barefooted animal.’
These almost immeasurable, soft, smooth plains, on which the horses perpetually stand, are not intersected by hard, rough, stony roads; neither are the horses, which are grass fed, worked continuously, although it is well known that they are often barbarously forced to cover long distances, when they are doubly exposed to become footsore from the facts of having to work at intervals only, and then over soft, smooth grass that does not afford what Mayhew calls ‘the needful attrition’ to keep the horn up to its work. Mr. Miles tells us—what we all ought to know, although even he was unable to grasp it fully—‘it is an invariable law of animal economy not to continue to unemployed structures the same measure of efficient reparation that is extended to parts constantly engaged in performing their allotted tasks.’ Herein is explained the reason why these horses do not acquire the hardness of hoof that horses elsewhere, and under different circumstances, with harder work, not only acquire but also maintain.
In the North, Central, and South American countries which have been formerly mentioned in these chapters, pastures and breeding grounds are not to be found in such large tracts, as in those that have just now been spoken of. Besides, such grounds being widely separated from each other, the consequence is that horses are scarcer and of far higher value. The geological character
of these countries is also such that hard, rough, stony ground very largely predominates outside these breeding grounds; although in some parts, where the stone is small and loose, the roads become excessively heavy and trying during the rainy season. In some parts of these countries it rains every day in the year, and in other parts they get dry roads during six months, and wet ones during the other six. The horses have to travel over either, and over naked sheets of rock, as they in turn present themselves; and, as Mr. Douglas says, ‘without difficulty, and to the evident advantage of their hoofs, they never suffer from contracted feet, or from corns, sandcracks, &c.’ Yet their work is of the hardest. Many of them bring down from the interior, many hundreds of miles, two bales of cotton, which weigh with pack-saddle, &c., over 3 cwt., and in fording rivers have to carry the driver across also. This is the way in which all the commerce of the country is carried on. There is not a horseshoe or a nail to be obtained over the whole route, and on some roads at crop times nearly a thousand horses will pass daily, descending, and a similar quantity returning, inland, loaded with imports, sometimes of the same cotton that they brought down the year before, but which has been to Europe or the States to get manufactured.
is more available this is used instead; where neither can be procured the stable is known far and wide as a bad one.
Xenophon, who wrote the most complete work on horsemanship of his day, makes no mention of horseshoes; while, on the other hand, he is particularly explicit as to the means to be taken to harden and toughen horses’ hoofs. He recommends specially for this purpose bare stone pavement, which, he says, ‘will cool, harden, and improve a horse’s feet merely by his standing upon it, while the same benefit will result to his hoofs as if he were made to travel on stony roads every day.’
Another writer, Vegetius, says: ‘The floor of the stable should not be made of soft wood, but of solid hard oak, which will make the horse’s feet as hard as rock.’
The untutored natives of the interior of the American countries in question, without having heard of either of these authorities or their writings, have found out for themselves that both of these floorings act in precisely the manner described; whilst we, acknowledging that it should be hard, have nailed the standing place of a horse on to his feet, and have made him carry it about with him. The theory was ingenious, but it was wanting in logic; and the practice is found to be expensive and unsatisfactory from the outset all through.
Osmer, writing more than a century ago, says: ‘In many parts of the world to this day, even on the most rocky ground, horses are accustomed to carry
their riders unshod; and in this kingdom I have known several horses ridden for a considerable time unshod on the turnpike roads about London without any injury done to their feet. And I believe there are many horses that might travel their whole lifetime unshod, on any road, if they were rasped round and short at the toe; because all feet exposed to hard objects become thereby more obdurate if the sole be never pared.’ In shoeing à la Charlier the sole never is pared, and it is always in direct contact with the ground, without any shield whatever to protect it from even sharp stones.
The hackneyed objection to ‘our moist, variable climate, and hard roads,’ so continually opposed to the practice of leaving horses to go unshod (even by some of the advocates for shoeing à la Charlier), is a mere empirical assertion, not founded upon experience, but an effect of imagination and prejudice which has become willingly accepted, without a challenge, whilst it is really the reverse of fact.
Mayhew says: ‘Truly the stable mind must quit the scene of its present labours before it will submit to be enlightened. It is now so protected by a wall of selfishness, ignorance, and prejudice that it is open to no assault;’ and elsewhere: ‘Nature sends the horse into the world with ready-made and stout-made shoes.’ Mr. Douglas says of horse-shoers: ‘They think they can stand, as it were, with their backs against the door of the world, in order to prevent novelties which might interfere with their opinions from coming in. But the world’s walls are
wondrous ones, and its side doors numerous; so, whilst these opposers of progress manage to keep the main gate closed, the truth contrives to scale the walls, or slide in by side doors.’
The writer is of opinion that these defenders of the main gate keep a sharp look out over both the side doors and the wall’s summit, and allow nothing to pass by either if they can help it. They contradict every statement that is likely to interfere with their gains. Prince Bismarck is credited with saying that ‘he never believed anything until it was officially contradicted.’
Those who derive, either directly or indirectly, gain from shoeing cannot be expected to help to make any breach in this wall, but, on the contrary, to defend it to their utmost every time any assault is attempted upon it.
CHAPTER XIII.
it to a tip later on. Most likely he will bring it to that at the second shoeing; but he is able to take care of himself and his horse, and stands in no need of advice.
draw the nail and point another, and frequently this will be done on the face of the shoe which is partially fixed. Nails that have scales upon them should be rejected, because the scale will weaken the nail at the part where it exists, and may cause it to bulge in, or bend and press upon the sensitive inner parts, although the point may, at the moment when the weak part of the shank gets introduced, be going all right; also, the scale may open out in the course of driving, and cause much injury. The machine-made nails of the Seeley Company are to be recommended for their general good quality and freedom from scaliness. From Belgium also come nails superior to the English-made ones, which seem to be among the poorest.
When once these minutiæ are seized, the fancied difficulty is practically vanquished; and why should not a groom or a carter learn them as easily as a farrier? They generally spring from the same class, and Mr. Douglas tells us that tailors throw down the needle to nail on horseshoes in the army.
We next discover that ‘Aberlorna’ has travelled in South America, and has ridden hundreds of miles on unshod horses, whose feet ‘grew fast.’ He states that ‘he had often to cut the toes’—the toes only, mark—‘which was done with some difficulty with a chisel and mallet.’ To people who have not had his experience it might be interesting to learn from him whether he means that the only difficulty consisted in the density and toughness of the horn being so great as to render a heavy mallet necessary to drive
the chisel through it, or whether there was any other annoyance or difficulty attached to the operation; because some people may say that if the annoyance in cutting the toe is as great as that of shoeing, they prefer rather ‘to bear those ills they have, than fly to others they know not of.’ By rasping the toe once or twice a week it may always be kept in good form, and then no cutting would be required.
‘Aberlorna’ has happily known how to compress a large amount of useful observation into the twenty-five lines which his letter occupies; some people cannot say more to the real point in as many columns.
The next statement of this gentleman, who went about the world with his eyes open, is that ‘he does not remember seeing any lame horses except in the towns, and these were generally, if not always, I observed, shod. The (country? ) roads were for the most part sand, full of rough stones, and in some places causewayed for miles. Anyhow they were pretty rough going.’ So, then, it really is a fact that in the towns, where horseshoes would have been brought into fashion by Europeans, and where the road surface would be smoother, shod horses went lame, whilst the unshod ones went sound on long journeys over worse roads. ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’
Another thing which many readers would probably be glad to hear from this gentleman is, whether by ‘causeways’ are to be understood roads
that are ’pitched,’ or paved with stone, somewhat like London streets, only more roughly, in parts where they would in the rainy season become otherwise impassable; as, in certain places, such roads do exist to the writer’s personal knowledge. ‘People in this country seem to have no idea what a horse’s foot is. They have always seen horses shod, and think they always must be shod, and never will alter the method if they are let alone.’ Thanks, ‘Aberlorna,’ for putting the thing so plainly; it comes so much better from you. Some who think of a horse’s foot only as a lump of horn stuck on to the end of his leg for the purpose of nailing a shoe on to, will be led by you to investigate the nature of the foot of the horse.
‘As to farriers, it is useless talking to them. Take your horses to them, and make them follow out your directions through thick and thin; it is the only way.’ Exactly so; no one could give better advice.
In November, 1878, a correspondent wrote in a contemporary:—‘The argument against horseshoes seemed to me so strong, and the convenience of doing without them so great, that I resolved to try the experiment. Accordingly, when my pony’s shoes were worn out, I had them removed, and gave him a month’s rest at grass, with an occasional drive of a mile or two on the high road while his hoofs were hardening. The result, at first, seemed doubtful. The hoof was a thin shell, and kept chipping away, until it had worn down below the holes of the
nails by which the shoes had been fastened. After this, the hoof grew thick and hard, quite unlike what it had been before. I now put the pony to full work, and he stands it well. He is more sure-footed; his tread is almost noiseless; and his hoofs are in no danger from the rough hands of the farrier; and the change altogether has been a clear gain, without anything to set off against it. The pony was between four and five years old, and had been regularly shod up to the present year. He now goes better without shoes than he ever did with them; and without shoes he will continue to go as long as he remains in my possession.’
That eight months after—in August, 1879—this gentleman should send a copy of this same article to a provincial paper, is proof that he had never had any difficulties after the first month, the time needed for the ‘thick,’ ‘hard’ horn to reach the ground. There is one thing that he does not tell us, but which would have been interesting to know; and it is, whether any of his neighbours found heart and brains enough to profit by his example. His silence leaves room for the conjecture that ‘they had eyes, but saw not.’ It is even possible they still look upon his proceeding as an eccentricity. Such is life; the world might stand still for all that some people care to the contrary.
At the same time that this was passing, a well-known farmer and breeder of shorthorns in Cumberland wrote:—‘I had a brood mare which had been running barefooted for several years, when,