Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/698

 or removed by tools, and it shows the workman at a glance the bearing of the iron. The whole surface of the shoe intended to be in contact with the horn should be distinctly imprinted on the contour of the hoof, so as to insure the closest and most accurate intimacy between the two; and this carbonized surface should not be interfered with on any account, except by the rasp, which is employed to remove any sharpness of the edge of the crust that may have been caused in this fitting. No harm can arise from this mode of adapting the shoe. Usually a small portion of the margin of the wall has to be removed to imbed the clip; this is done with the knife.

By this hot-fitting, the shoe is made to fit the hoof; with the cold-fitting, it is the contrary. It would be departing from the object of the brief sketch I have here laid down to describe how the shoe ought to fit every foot; suffice it to say, that it should be wide enough at the quarters and heels to support the whole of the crust, but yet not wide or long enough to endanger the opposite limbs by striking them, or run the chance of being torn off by the other feet treading upon it; and it should not impinge upon the frog, neither prevent that organ from playing its part in the physiology of the foot.

The shoe, dressed round its edges with a file (my shoes are usually made in a tool, and finished off with a file on their concavity, especially towards the 'catch,' or 'sunk calkin'), is then nailed on. Every nail should pass through sound horn, and a short thick hold of the wall is better than a long thin one. A foot allowed to grow