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COLD SHOEING IN SPAIN—TRIMMING THE FROG.
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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!

Amongst the evils of paring away the horn, there is one that appears to have passed unnoticed, or uncommented upon, by the authorities who so strenuously endeavour to point out the evils of shoeing upon the so-called ‘improved principles.’ Yet it is not one of the least. In trimming away the frog on its sides, the farrier scores deeply with the point of his drawing knife into the sole, and this, added to the paring to which he subjects the sole all over, must necessarily and obviously further weaken the arch of the foot. The letting down of the arch in this way contributes to navicular disease, for between the