Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/530

 heels, be brought before him, such meets with treatment yet more severe; the bar is scooped out, the frog trimmed, and the sole drawn as thin as possible, even to the quick, under pretence of giving him ease; because, he says, he is hot-footed, or foundered. By which treatment, the horse is rendered more lame than he was before.' This causes contraction of the hoof and compression of the parts within; and, besides, a shoe was applied thin on the outer circumference and thick on the inner, which, being concave to the foot and convex to the ground, afforded but few points of support, removed the frog from pressure, and caused great mischief. I possess some specimens of this terrible instrument of last-century barbarism. It almost makes one shudder to think of the fearful agony the poor horses must have suffered, when compelled to wear and work with it.

Osmer continues: 'Let the shoe on every horse stand wider at the points of the heels than the foot itself; otherwise, as the foot grows in length, the heel of the shoe in a short time gets within the heel of the horse; which pressure often breaks the crust, produces a temporary lameness, perhaps a corn. Let every kind of foot be kept as short at the toe as possible (so as not to affect the quick), for by a long toe, the foot becomes thin and weak, the heels low, and the flexor tendons of the leg are strained; the shortness of the toe helps also to widen the narrow heels. In all thin, weak-footed horses the rasp should be laid on the toe in such a manner as to render it as thick as may be; by which means the whole foot becomes gradually thicker, higher, and stronger. In all feet whose texture is very strong, the rasp may be laid obliquely on