He finished the mile in 2:13. They forgot to time Gray Dan, who was so far behind.
Bob and his crowd fell off their perch in disgust and left their money with the stake-holder. Abe still owns the lower eighty, and sundry citizens of that locality have resolved that whenever they bet again how fast a horse can go, they will stipulate whether it be trot or pace.
M. R. HIGBEE.
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.