The Truth About Horseshoeing.

Editor Trotwood’s:

In a foot-note to my article in your February number, you said, “We will gladly publish your ideas on horseshoeing,” thus letting the bars down, knowing, perhaps, that I would be liable to wander in.

If I could turn backward in my career twenty or thirty years, I would undertake the task with more confidence in my ability to furnish something worthy of a place in your columns. I was young in the business then. I had finished my apprenticeship, and felt sure that the few things I did not know relative to the farrier’s art were not worth considering. Since then, I have been a regular attendant in the great free school of experience, taught by that merciless teacher, Necessity, and while I have been fairly successful in trying to furnish unnatural protection to that part of the horse which comes in contact with the earth, I am still in need of the necessary amount of conceit that would enable me to pose as a teacher.

I trust you will allow me to ramble around back and forth between the horseshoer and the horse-owner (one as much to blame as the other when the “family pet” goes lame), and I feel confident of being able to benefit some one, or his poor old overfed horse.

To the uninitiated who read the average writer’s suggestions on horseshoeing, it would appear that there is no other mechanical operation so difficult as that of attaching a shield of metal to the hoof of a horse. That is an erroneous opinion.

I was once told by an old English shoer that “the man who picked up a horse’s foot that had never worn a shoe, gave it a brush or two with a rasp and then nailed on a light piece of iron (an old, half-worn shoe, perhaps) would do a better job of shoeing than nine-tenths of the so-called fancy jobs.” I often think of my old English friend, who spent five, perhaps seven years, as an apprentice trying to master the trade. How different here in free America, and in these catch-as-catch-can times. It is not a rare thing to find men who are proprietors of shoeing shops, whose apprenticeship consisted of six months or a year’s service as a helper, and the vast army of horses to be shod is owned and controlled by people who are very much in a hurry, and who give little or no attention to the care of horses’ feet.

So the “family pet,” as Trotwood has called him, goes lame. He is taken to the shoeing shop in the belief that the shoer can relieve him. Now, this shoer is a human being, flesh and blood like other men, and it is extremely difficult for horseshoers to be strictly honest. (I speak from experience.) The fact is, he wants to tell the owner that his horse is too highly fed for the amount of exercise he is getting. He would like to tell him that high calks and dry stalls are slowly, but surely, drawing his hoofs together, causing a lateral pressure of the wall on the more sensitive internal parts, and he thinks of many other things that point to the duty of the care-taker. But I have found that, usually, that kind of talk don’t suit my customers. It puts too much of the responsibility on them, so the shoer begins at once to look wise. The horseshoer who knows how to look wise is an artist, born to succeed. Placing his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, he begins a tirade of abuse on the man who last shod the horse, after this fashion: “Well, I should think he would be lame. Any man that don’t know better than to put a pair of cook stoves like those on a horse’s foot,” etc., etc. After he has removed the “cook stoves” he proceeds to shoe the horse in his own unapproachable way polishes the shoes, rasps the hoofs carefully and, perhaps, saturates the bottoms with oil of tar. He pays the price demanded, takes the horse home and, when his lameness grows worse instead of better, he comes to the conclusion that he has been “buncoed.”

A few days ago a grocer’s horse with thick-walled hoofs was brought to us, shod with heavy shoes and high calks, hoofs badly contracted, and dead lame. I promised that if given my own way, I would cure him. We shortened the hoofs, put on a pair of “tips”—just a little patch of iron on each toe, letting the frog, or what remained of it, down on the ground. In less than ten days the lameness ceased though he had been lame for many months. In winter when it is necessary to shoe him with calks again, he occasionally shows a little lameness, but when spring comes we go back to the “tips” and the trouble vanishes. The owner of this horse thinks we performed a miracle, but we did nothing of the kind, we omitted the fancy rasping, the oil of tar, and the wise look in this case, and just kept close to nature.

In the days of the old horse cars in the cities I have stood on the boulder-covered streets of Chicago and watched the car horses, to see how they were shod. Imagine my surprise when I found hundreds of them shod in front, with shoes similar to those we used on the grocer’s horse.

When we mortals, who flatter ourselves that we are fashioned after God’s own image, drift too far from nature’s prescribed course, we soon discover the folly of our actions. If we don’t, the undertaker, for a cash consideration backs up to the front door of our house with a profusely tasseled hearse and starts us on our journey toward the head waters of Salt river. Meanwhile, the horse goes on, pounding away on the stony pikes, which, long ago, were substituted for the old bridle paths and the turf-covered highways, so we resort to metal protection for the hoof.

I have always looked upon horseshoeing, as practiced in many shops, as a necessary evil, on a par with the taking into the human system of vile physics and rank lotions, and when both owner and shoer are equally ignorant or careless, what must the consequences be?

A number of years ago, a man came to me for advice as to how his family horse should be shod. I ventured a suggestion and he brought the horse in. This was early in September. We shod him all round, doing what we called a first-class job. I advised that the shoes should be reset in about six weeks. He went away seemingly much pleased, and his joy lasted all winter.

On the 28th of March he came back with the shoes all on just as we left them. A few things went through my mind which I thought best not to make known to my customer. We reset the shoes and I never saw him afterwards. That was about sixteen years ago, and I presume that when the shoes need resetting again he will bring the horse to have us look after him.

Just one more: I once shod a banker’s horse all round, early in May. As he took the horse from the shop he said his reason for having him shod was on account of turning him out to pasture. Shades of Pegasus, think of that! During the summer he sold the horse and in November he was brought to us to be “sharpened up” for the winter. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not a shoe had been removed since we put them on early in May.

I relate these two instances to show that there are difficulties in the handling of horses’ feet over which the shoer has no control, and which frequently put him in a frame of mind so that he concludes to abandon the idea of painstaking, and resolves to be less particular about his work.

While roaming around in this broad, busy country of ours, I have drifted into many shoeing shops, and have worked in not a few of them. The greatest fault I find with my fellow craftsmen is their universal tendency toward overdoing. In their zeal to excel the other fellow they resort to “fads” and adopt unnecessary methods, many of which are decidedly injurious to the horse, and you who have horses to be shod should insist that you prefer a plain, careful job, minus the whittling, polishing, rasping, etc., and the shoer, in these days of close competition, will be only too glad to obey orders.

But how shall the owner know what is best for his horse? He is a butcher, a baker or perhaps he is the time-honored “candlestick maker,” and is as busy as any of us in this mad rush of to-day, from which there seems to be no escape. So, really, I don’t believe he ever will give much attention to his faithful horse’s feet, and between unscrupulous horseshoers and third-grade veterinary surgeons, “poor old Dobbin” will continue to be, as he has been in the past, the victim of his master’s misplaced confidence. What does the average man know about the needs and requirements of his own body? He has been called “a bundle of habits,” and from what I can observe, he is about ready to draw a good salary as the star performer in “a comedy of errors.” But in spite of stumbling blocks, and millstones around our necks, out of the rank and file of common men there comes occasionally, an Edison, a Horace Greeley, a Mark Twain or one like your own Major Thomas, whose portrait adorns the frontispiece of your March number. From the same source comes an occasional good, honest, painstaking horseshoer, whose sole ambition is not for the dollars he may lay up. He is one whom “goodness and mercy will follow, all the days of his life”—one who knows the importance of his calling and who realizes that a reputation for sobriety and honesty, coupled with natural ability and acquired skill, will bring to him the reward he is seeking.

I have written enough for this time, and what have I said in the above preamble that will enlighten the reader who really is trying to post himself on the care of the horse’s foot and the proper method of shoeing it? He does not desire to become a student of anatomy, and I know from experience that the advice of an humble knight of the anvil would not be taken seriously by the majority of horse owners.

But I have in my library two small volumes on shoeing, and the care of the hoof, which to me are worth their weight in gold. The first is “Practical Horseshoeing,” by T. Fleming, President of the Central Veterinary Surgeons’ Medical Society, Edinburgh, Scotland, published by D. Appleton Co., New York. No honest man, who knows whereof he speaks, can even criticise this work.

The other is “Pathological Horseshoeing,” by Joseph B. Coleman, V. S., which goes a little farther into diseases of the foot and their treatment.

Get these two little books, brother horse owner, and when the good horse goes lame, bump your head against the side of his stall and think. They will help you to see how far you are keeping from nature’s ways. Consider that your horse is made of tissue and nerves, almost as delicate as your own; that he is entirely at your mercy and unlike the “Devil Wagon,” he cannot be patched up with files, monkey-wrenches and cement.

LA FORGE.

Pecatonica, Ill.

TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.

TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn. Office 150 Fourth Ave., North.

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE,
Editor-in-Chief.

E. E. SWEETLANDBusiness Manager.
GEO. E. McKENNONPresident.
JOHN W. FRYVice-President.
EUGENE ANDERSONTreas.
WOOTEN MOORESec’y.

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NASHVILLE, TENN., May, 1906.