Rational Horse-Shoeing

by John E. Russell

SOUND HORSES.

A sound horse is, after man, the paragon of animals. "In form and moving how express and admirable!" His frame is perfect mechanism, instinct with glowing life, and guarded by the great conservative and healing powers of nature from disease and death. His vitality is surpassed by that of man, because man has the endowment of soul, and in his human breast hope springs eternal and imagination gives fresh powers of resistance. Like man, the horse conforms cheerfully to all climates and to all circumstances. He is equally at home—

"Whether where equinoctial fervors glow
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow."

Amid the sands of Arabia his thin hide and fine hair evidence his breeding; in the frozen north his shaggy covering defends him from the cold storms and searching winds. The disadvantages under which he will work are in no way so clearly illustrated as in his efficiency when exposed to the evils of shoeing. Placed upon heel-calks, to slip about and catch with wrenching force in the interstices of city pavements, or loaded with iron-clogs, to give him "knee-action" and to "untie his shoulders," he bravely faces his discomforts and does to the best of his ability his master's will.

How quickly his active system responds to intelligent care and shows its beneficial results! And when relieved from the abuses of ignorance, his recuperative powers re-establish the springing step of youth.

CHAPTER I.
EVILS OF COMMON SHOEING.

Every horseman finds his chief difficulty in the fact that he has to protect the natural foot from the wear incident to the artificial condition in which the horse is placed in his relation to man. In those important industries where great numbers of horses are used, and the profit of the business depends upon the efficiency of the animal, the question becomes a very serious one, and the life term of the horse, or the proportion of the number of animals that are kept from their tasks by inability, make the difference between profit and loss to the great transportation lines that facilitate the busy current of city life. But notwithstanding the importance of this subject, upon the score equally of economy and humanity, the world is, for the most part, just where it was a thousand years ago, possibly worse off, for the original purpose of shoeing was only to protect the foot from attrition or chipping, and but little iron was used, but, as the utility of the operation became apparent, the smith boldly took the responsibility of altering the form of the hoof to suit his own unreasoning views, cutting away, as superfluous, the sole and bars, paring the frog to a shapely smoothness, and then nailing on a broad, heavy piece of iron, covering not only the wall but a portion of the sole also, thus putting it out of the power of the horse to take a natural, elastic step.

In a short time the hoof, unbraced by the sole and bars, begins to contract, the action of the frog upon the ground, which in the natural foot is threefold—acting as a cushion to receive the force of the blow and thus relieve the nerves and joints of the leg from concussion, opening and expanding the hoof by its upward pressure, quickening the circulation and thereby stimulating the natural secretions,—this all important part of the organization, without which there is no foot and no horse, becomes hard, dry, and useless. Then follows the whole train of natural consequences. The delicate system of joints inclosed in the hoof feel the pressure of contraction, the knees bend forward in an attempt to relieve the contracted heel. In this action the use of the leg is partially lost. The horse endeavors to secure a new bearing, interferes in movement, or stands in uneasy torture.

Nature frequently seeks relief by bursting the dry and contracted shell, in what is known as quarter or toe crack, and the miserable victim becomes practically useless at an age when his powers should be in their prime.

Every horseman will acknowledge that his experience has a parallel in the picture here presented. Many men have at various times attempted reform, but the difficulty heretofore encountered has been that the mechanical application was in the hands, not of the owners and reasoners, but in those of a class of men who are, for the most part, ignorant, prejudiced, and, consequently, apt to oppose any innovation upon the old abuses in which they have had centuries of vested right; and it was not until the studies of Mr. R. A. Goodenough that there were brought to bear veterinary knowledge, mechanical skill, and inventive faculty, to overcome the stolidity and interest which have been the lions in the way of true reform.

CHAPTER II.
FROG PRESSURE.

That portion of the hoof called the "frog," performs the most important visible function in the economy of the movement of the horse. It is intensely vital and vigorous. The greater its exposure and the severer its exertion, the more strenuous is the action of nature to renew it. It is the spring at the immediate base of the leg, relieving the nervous system and joints from the shock of the concussion when the Race Horse thunders over the course, seeming in his powerful stride to shake the solid earth itself, and it gives the Trotter the elastic motion with which he sweeps over the ground noiseless upon its yielding spring, but, if shod with heavy iron, so that the frog does not reach the ground to perform its function, his hoofs beat the earth with a force like the hammers of the Cyclops.

With the facility to error characteristic of the unreasoning, it has been one of the opinions of grooms and farriers that this callous, india-rubber-like substance would wear away upon exposure to the action of the road or pavement, and it has been one of their cherished practices to set the horse up upon iron, so that he could by no possibility strike the frog upon the ground.

In addition to this violation of nature, they pare away the exfoliating growth of the organ, and trim it into the shape that suits their fancy.

Without action, muscular life is impossible, the portion of the body thus situated must die, paralyzed or withered. Motion, use, are the law of life, and the frog of the horse's hoof with a function as essential and well-defined as any portion of his body is subject to the general law. Without use it dries, hardens, and becomes a shelly excrescence upon a foot, benumbed by the percussion of heavy iron upon hard roads. This is a loss nature struggles in vain to repair, the horse begins to fail at once. The elastic step, which in a state of nature spurned the dull earth, becomes heavy and stiff, and the unhappy brute experiences the evils partially described in the previous chapter.

To restore the natural action of the foot by putting the bearing on the frog, is the chief object of the system we advocate, and the Goodenough shoe is designed especially to provide for that first and last necessity. If this is accomplished with a sound horse, he will avoid the thousand ills that arise from the usual method, and, so far as his feet are concerned, he will remain sound.

If the shoe is adopted as a cure for the unsoundness already manifested in animals that have been deprived of the proper use of their feet, it will cure them, not by any virtue in the iron itself, nor by any magic in its application, but simply by giving beneficent nature an opportunity to repair the ruin that the ignorance of man has wrought upon her perfect handiwork.

This part of our subject is so important that we shall return to it again in subsequent chapters, and enforce it at every point.

GOODENOUGH SHOE—FRONT.

CHAPTER III.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GOODENOUGH SHOE.

From the representation of the shoe in the cut, its peculiar conformation will be observed, and the reason for these changes from the common form we shall endeavor to explain as clearly as possible. In the first place, it is very light, scarcely half the weight of the average old-fashioned shoe. The foot surface is rolled with a true bevel, making that portion of the web which receives the bearing of the hoof, the width of the thickness of the wall or crust. This prevents pressure upon the sole, and makes the shoe a continuation of the wall of the foot. The ground surface of the shoe has also a true bevel, following the natural slope of the sole, and bringing the inner part of the shoe to a thin edge. The outer portion is thus a thick ridge, dentated, or cut out into cogs or calks, allowing the nail-heads to be countersunk. This arrangement gives five calks—a wide toe-calk, the usual heel-calks, and two calks, one on each side, midway between the toe and heel—thus putting the bearing equally upon all the parts of the foot.

This calking has a double object. In the common system of shoeing, to avoid slipping in winter upon the ice, and in the cities upon the wet, slimy surface of pavement, or to assist draft, it is customary to weld a calk upon the toe of a shoe, and to turn up the heels to correspond. In this motion the horse is placed upon a tripod, his weight being entirely upon three points of his foot, and those not the parts intended to bear the shock of travel or to sustain his weight. The position of the frog is of course one of hopeless inaction, and the motion of the unsupported bones within the hoof produce inflammation at the points of extreme pressure, so that, in case of all old horses accustomed to go upon calks, there is ulceration of the heels, in the form of "corns," which the smith informs the owner is the effect of hard roads bruising the heel from the outside; he usually "cuts out the corn," and puts on more iron in the form of a "bar shoe." Or the same action which produces corns, acting upon the dead, dry, unsupported frog and sole, breaks the arch of the foot so that a "drop sole" is manifest, or "pumiced foot," for both of which a "bar shoe" is the unvarying, pernicious prescription. In the Goodenough shoe, the calks are supplied, and the weight so distributed that the objection to the old method does not exist.