Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/683

 amount of adhesion, and consequent loss of speed and power, as well as diminution of stability.

For the reasons before given, the frog should remain untouched by the knife, unless it be to remove some flakes which are all but detached; though this should always be done under supervision, as the drawing-knife has no conscience. It is scarcely necessary to say that the barbarous and destructive operation of opening the heels should be sternly reprobated. The 'commissures' of the bars and frogs may be scraped out by some blunt instrument, merely to free them from soil or gravel that may have lodged at the bottom.

This is all the preparation any kind of foot usually requires for the shoe, and may be summed up in a few words: levelling the crust in conformity with the direction of the limb and foot, and removing as much of its margin as will restore it to its normal length, rounding its outer edge at the same time; and leaving the sole, frog, bars, and heels in all their natural integrity. Such is the treatment of the hoofs of the horses under my care; and so strong are they—such massive solid blocks of horn do they appear, that should a shoe by some rare chance be lost on a journey, there is no danger whatever in marching a horse for ten, twenty, or even thirty miles without another. Horses are never pricked in nailing, and foot-diseases are, I may say, scarcely known. Nearly every hoof is a model, and as perfect as before the animal was first shod.

With hoofs of this description, the kind of shoe employed is of secondary importance. I need not say that the armature needed to protect the crust and maintain