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.