Right hind shoe with lateral toe-clips
to prevent “clicking” and the various
injuries due to forging.
Causes.—1. Faulty conformation; for example, horses that stand considerably higher at the croup than at the withers; horses with long legs and short bodies; horses that “stand under” in front and behind. 2. Using horses on heavy ground, unskilful driving, allowing a long-necked, heavy-headed horse to carry his head too low; riding without holding a horse to his work by feeling his mouth and pressing the knees against his sides. 3. Fatigue frequently leads to forging, even in horses that are well built and properly shod. It may also occur in the act of vaulting over an obstacle. 4. Poor shoeing, especially too long toes upon the front and hind hoofs, and too long front shoes.
The aim of the shoer should be to facilitate the quick and easy “breaking over” of the front foot, so that it may get away before it is overtaken by the hind foot. The toe of the front hoof should be fairly short and rolled; the quarters spared. The front shoe should be light, rolled at the toe and no longer and no wider than the hoof. The ends of the branches of a flat shoe, and also the heel-calks, in case they are needed to elevate a heel that is too low, should be bevelled from the hoof-surface of the shoe downward and forward under the foot. Such short heel-calks, bevelled to prevent forging, are called “forging calks.” If the horse continues to forge between the branches and against the ground-surface of the shoe, concaving this surface will prove advantageous (convex iron). The form of the front shoes of horses that forge should represent merely a prolongation of the hoof.
The “breaking over” of the hind foot should be delayed by sparing the toe and lowering the quarters, but not sufficiently to break the foot-axis too far backward. The hind shoe is to be squared at the toe and the lower edge of the shoe in the region of the toe well rounded; instead of a toe-clip, two side-clips are to be drawn up and the shoe so fitted that at least three-fourths of the thickness of the wall of the toe, with the edge well rounded, will extend forward beyond the shoe. Should the toe of the hoof be short it may be raised either by a low toe-calk set one-fourth of an inch back from the edge of the shoe, or by thinning the shoe from the toe to the ends of the branches. The branches of a flat hind shoe should extend somewhat farther back of the buttresses than under normal conditions, to trail upon the ground just before the hoof alights, and acting as a brake, to bring the hoof to earth ([Fig. 150]).
Fig. 150.
Hind shoe with swelled toe to slow the breaking over. Often efficient when the hoof is too short at the toe: a, long branches to trail and bring the foot to earth; b, outer toe clip; c, toe squared and set under to prevent injury to front hoof, and to deaden the sound of forging.
“Cross-firing” is most apt to occur and is most dangerous at extreme speed. Then, when the inner branch of the hind shoe strikes the inner heel, quarter or shoe of the diagonal front foot, both feet are in the air,—the fore foot is approaching the middle of its stride, while the offending hind foot is in the last third of its flight. The standing position that favors cross-firing is the base-wide (toe-wide) in front, and the base-narrow (toe-narrow) behind. With this direction of limbs the flight of the fore feet is forward and inward during the first half of their stride, while the flight of the hind feet is forward and inward during the second half of their stride ([see Figs. 72], [73], [75]).
The problem is, therefore, so to pare and shoe a base-wide fore foot that it will break over nearer the centre of the toe and thus execute less of an inward swing during the first half of its stride, and to so pare and shoe a base-narrow hind foot that it will break over nearer the centre of the toe and thus execute less of an inward swing during the second half of its stride. Neither a toe-wide nor a toe-narrow foot can be made to break over the exact centre of the toe, and yet it is possible by dressing the hoof and by shoeing to shift the breaking over point nearer to the centre of the toe, and by doing so, to alter slightly the lines of flight of the feet.
Dressing and shoeing the front foot: The hoof should be relatively low from the middle of the toe around to and including the outer buttress. If the inner half of the wall is deficient in length it must be raised above the outer half by applying a shoe which is thinner in its outer than in its inner branch. The inner toe should be left long.