At every shoeing or removing, the frog should be perfectly cleared of all defective parts by the knife, and where the disease has once manifested itself the cleft should be kept continually stopped with tar and tow. A return to a healthy state is likely to be tedious, therefore continued attention to these directions is necessary. If a severe case, use a bar-shoe, to avoid the wear and tear of the road, and which will also help to keep the pledgets of tar and tow in their place. To prevent thrush, let the litter and bedding be completely removed from the horse every morning till bedtime at night; let the pavement be kept scrupulously clean through the day; attend and wash the feet, examine them frequently, and upon the slightest sign of the disease use the remedial means.
Quittor.—This is a disease of the feet, wherein, either from delicacy of or accident to the sole, the sensible part becomes affected. A suppurative sinus is formed, eating away till it often comes out at the coronet. Once it reaches this, the animal, unless of great value, might as well be destroyed, the restorative process being of a most tedious and expensive character, requiring continual manipulation by a surgeon.
By careful shoeing (where nails are not driven out of their proper direction) and a most exact examination of the foot where any extraneous matter, such as glass, gravel, &c., is suspected of having entered or damaged it, quittor will most probably be avoided.
Canker seldom attacks gentlemen’s horses, or well-bred ones. It is literally a change of a portion of the foot into a kind of fungus, sometimes commencing in the sole, sometimes in the frogs, and is aggravated by foul litter, bad stabling, and general bad care.
As no dressing or external application will restore the foot without manipulation, a surgeon only can deal with it.
Cracked and Greasy Heels.—Animals of languid circulation in the extremities are more susceptible of such diseases, which are induced and aggravated by lazy ignorant grooms pursuing their objectionable practice of wetting the legs, and leaving them to dry themselves.—[See page 13.]
Symptoms are tumefaction and soreness of the hinder part of the pasterns, even to fissures emitting matter.
Clip away the hair in the first instance, so as to be able to cleanse the sore by washing it with warm water and soft soap, drying it perfectly. Then apply glycerine lotion ([page 158]).
If the sore seems likely to incapacitate the animal from work, administer a mild aloetic purge ([page 108]). Very serious consequences may result from the indolence of grooms in neglecting this ailment. In acute cases, the sore, eating into the tendon, produces mortification and death. I have myself lost a valuable animal from this disease, through the gross neglect of my grooms in my absence.
Except in the very earliest stages, and in palpably trifling cases, a veterinary surgeon should be consulted, especially in what is called “grease,” or matter running from these cracks. The preventive means are, never to allow water to your horses’ legs above the coronet on any pretence whatever, and if by accident or work they get wet, to have them rubbed dry as promptly as possible.