Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/701

 should a shoe chance to come off on the road, an accident, as we may infer, extremely likely to happen, great damage will be done to the pared sole and the thin, brittle, split-up crust, and in all probability the animal will be lamed. The morbid desire to make fine work of shoeing when the horse first began to be shod, ends in the greatest amount of skill and labour being required to continue it, and keep the animal fit for service, though with deformed feet, seriously damaged horn, and perhaps great suffering. When the coachman or groom's fancy compels the farrier to carry his rasp to the top of the hoof, and make that organ far better fitted for exhibition on a sportsman's table than to meet the rude contact of the ground, or withstand the influences of weather and frequent shoeings, then the injury is greatly increased.

The so-called 'coronary frog-band,' or cuticular prolongation that extends in a wide, whitish-coloured band around the upper part of the hoof, and which is often so scrupulously destroyed in shoeing, is intended by nature to protect the fibres of the wall from the effects of heat and dryness while they are being secreted or so immature as to be incapable of resisting these influences; for it will be remembered that the wall is formed at the coronet, and this covering guarantees not only the integrity of the newly-made horn-tubes, but also maintains the secreting vessels that enter them in a healthy condition, and competent to supply fresh material for wear. Its destruction induces 'sandcrack,' and other morbid conditions of the crust.

After the clenches have been evenly laid down on the wall of the hoof, no more should be done, unless it be to