Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/709

 his sole and frog on the ground, just to ease them; and yet they are so tender that he would be even worse off than he is now with thick shoes on, and perhaps calkins higher at one side than the other, throwing the strain all on one side of the limb? This tenderness has been ascribed by those who believed in lateral expansion and sole descent, and consequently patronized paring to excess, to the binding action of the nails, standing on straw, being kept in stalls—indeed, everything but the right cause, and which they had themselves been guilty of inflicting. The gradual contraction of the hoof, the diseased frog, and the painful altered gait, were never ascribed to anything else than the cursed contact of the iron shoe. And yet the changed and unnatural direction of the limbs, induced by the pain in the feet, as well as by the unreasonable shoes applied to these poor tortured organs, was also producing disease in other parts of the member.

These diseases have usually been attributed to the fast paces, and concussion on the hard roads. To a certain extent this may be correct, but it must be borne in mind that we at the same time have maintained foot and limb in the worst possible condition to resist these influences.

The Arab method of shoeing is far superior to our own in this respect. The shoe rests on the wall, sole, and frog of the foot, the latter being particularly supported by the light metal plate; the nails, rough and clumsy as they are, obtain a short thick hold of the sole and crust, and are badly riveted—though it is extremely rare that a shoe comes off on a journey lasting for weeks together.