The Art of Horse-Shoeing: A Manual for Farriers

by William Hunting

Any average farrier can shoe without immediate harm a good well-formed foot that has a thick covering of horn, but when the horn is deficient in quantity or quality injury soon takes place if a badly fitted shoe be applied. There are feet which from disease or accident or bad shoeing have become, more or less, permanently damaged. Some are seriously altered in shape. Some are protected only by an unhealthy horn, and some show definite changes which cause weakness at a special part. These are the feet which really test the art of the farrier, for he must know just what to do and what not to do, and must possess the skill to practice what he knows.

Flat Feet. Some horses are born with flat feet, others acquire them as the result of disease. Too often the flat sole has another defect accompanying it—low weak heels. Such feet are best shod with a seated shoe so as to avoid any uneven pressure on the sole, and the shoes should always be fitted a little longer than the bearing-surface of the foot, so as to avoid any risk of producing a bruise at the heel—in other words, of causing a corn. The seated shoe is not advisable on a hunter. The concave shoe used for hunters has many distinct advantages and only one disadvantage for a flat foot, viz, that it has a wide flat foot-surface. It may cause an uneven pressure at the toe on a flat sole, but this is easily avoided by not making it too wide; perhaps the very worst thing to do with a flat foot is to try and make it look less flat by paring it down. The thinner the horn the greater the chance of injury to the sensitive parts under it, and every injury tends to make the sole weaker. Leaving the sole strong and thick, whilst fitting the shoe to avoid uneven pressure, is the principle of shoeing to be adopted with flat feet.

Convex Soles. The sole of the foot should be concave, but as the result of disease many feet become convex. This bulging or "dropping" of the sole varies in degree from a little more than flat to an inch or so below the level of the wall. When the under-surface of a horse's foot resembles in form the outside of a saucer, fitting a shoe becomes a work of art. Very often the wall is brittle and broken away and it is most difficult to find sufficient bearing-surface on the foot for a shoe. Many of these feet may be safely shod with a narrow shoe that rests only on the wall and the intermediate horn between the wall and sole. Such a shoe may, according to the size of the foot, be five-eighths or even three-quarters of an inch wide. Its thickness is to be such as will prevent the sole taking any direct bearing on the ground, and sometimes a shoe of this form is much thicker than it is wide. The advantage of this shoe is that it is so narrow that any bearing on the sole is avoided. The disadvantage is that on rough roads the sole may be bruised by the flint or granite stones. When the horn of a "dropped" sole is very thin, or when the horse has to work on roads covered with sharp loose stones, some cover for the sole is necessary and the narrow shoe is not practicable. To provide cover for the sole, the web of the shoe has to be wide, and, therefore, the foot-surface of the shoe must be seated out so as to avoid contact with the sole. Too often the seating is continued from the inner to the outer border of a shoe, so that no level bearing-surface is provided for the wall to rest on. This kind of shoe is like the hollow of a saucer, and when applied to a foot is certain to cause lameness soon or later. Each time the horse rests his weight on it the hoof is compressed by the inclined surface of the shoe, which instead of providing a firm bearing-surface affords only an ingenious instrument of torture.

Fig. 80.—Improper bearing surface.

Fig. 80.—A level bearing surface.

In even the worst of these deformed feet some good sound horn is to be found at the heels, where an inch or sometimes two can be utilised for level bearing. No matter how much seating is required at the toe and quarters, the heel of the shoe may always be made level.

It cannot be too strongly urged that in the preparation of feet with bulging soles no horn is to be removed from the sole. The toe is to be shortened, the heels lowered proportionately, and the bearing-surface of the wall made level with a rasp. At no place must the shoe rest on the sole. In nearly every case the toe is left too long and the bearing taken upon it by the shoe only increases the deformity. In many feet a large slice might be sawn off the toe with advantage, as the sensitive foot is separated from the wall by a mass of diseased horn which presses the wall at the toe forward. ([Fig. 81]).