Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/672

 was oozing through, before these cumbrous shields were applied. Words cannot describe the agony a horse must experience when he chances to put his foot on a sharp, or even a blunt stone. And yet the writers who have counselled this mutilation of the foot, have laid this tenderness—the limping gait, and falls with broken knees—to the nails of the shoe preventing expansion! Plates of leather covering the delicate frog and sole, and layers of tar and tow, are brought into requisition to compensate—though such is not confessed—for the loss of the horn; but with very small results. In a brief time, the whole of the foot becomes dwarfed; the frog, deprived of its natural function, like the muscles of a paralyzed arm, becomes atrophied, diseased, and almost disappears, the sole becomes still more concave and hard, and the foot towards the heels narrower, as in figure 206. At the same time the unfortunate creature begins to move as if in pain; the flexor tendon, on its course over the navicular bone, has lost its support, and has from the first shoeing been acting at a very serious disadvantage. The mutilation of the hoof, by removing the best portion of its horn, at the very time it was most required, has inflicted serious injury on it and the bone over which it has to play during its arduous task of flexing the foot and limb; while the heavy iron shoe, and the increase of concussion it engenders on artificial roads, all tend to