Rational Horse-Shoeing | Page 8

assisted the cure of contraction, in
the city, by manufacturing a country brook-bottom in this simple way:
Put half a bushel of pebbles into a stout tub, with or without some sand,
let them cover the bottom to the depth of two or three inches, pour on
water and you have a good imitation of a mountain brook. Put the
horse's forefeet into this, and let him bear his weight upon the frog. The
first time he will grow uneasy after a few minutes, but when his frog
becomes natural in its function he will be glad to stand there all day.
Do not carry this treatment to excess. Moderation is the most
satisfactory course in all things. Abjure utterly all oils and greasy hoof
dressings, they are pernicious recommendations of unreasoning grooms.
They fill the pores of the wall, and injure in every way. Nature will find

oil, if you will allow circulation and secretion, through the action of the
frog.
"Stuffing the feet," is another wretched, groom's device. A horse has a
dry, feverish hoof from contraction, so his hollow sole, denuded of its
frog, is "stuffed" with heating oil-meal, or nasty droppings of cows.
When this sort of thing is proposed, remember Punch's advice to those
about to be married, "Don't do it."
CHAPTER VIII.
ECONOMY OF THE GOODENOUGH SHOE.
A horse-shoe that the united voices or the shrewdest and ablest
managers in the country commend--inasmuch as it enables cripples to
work, frequently restores them, and maintains soundness where that
quality exists--need not be recommended on the ground of economy.
Such a horse-shoe could not be dear. But it takes all sorts of people to
make a world, and the pressure to the square inch of mean men is not to
be governed by safety-valves or regulated by gauges. There are too
many men who will use the thing that costs the least outlay, even if it
tortures or kills the horse. On the point of first cost we may say that if
our shoe had no advantage over the hand-made shoe in preserving the
natural action and growth of the foot, thereby retaining the powers of
the animal in full vigor, it would still be cheaper than the common shoe.
It is sold slightly higher than the clumsy pieces of bent iron called
horse-shoes by mere courtesy, and its lightness gives one-third more
shoes to the keg, while there is no expense of calking, which, in labor
and material, is equal to three cents per pound. Upon the point of
durability, it is well settled that the heavy shoe will not last so long as
the light one with frog-pressure. A horse set upon heavy shoes grinds
iron every time he moves. The least interposition of the frog will
reduce the wear very materially, and if the frog is well on the ground, a
horse will carry a shoe until he outgrows it.
A horse-railroad superintendent said to the writer, "We don't wear iron
nowadays, we wear frog and cobble-stones; nature provides frog and

Boston finds cobble-stones." When the Goodenough shoe is put for the
first time upon a dry, half-dead foot, and the frog brought into lively
action, growth is generally very rapid. We have often been compelled
to reset the shoe, cutting down the wall, in ten days after shoeing. Many
horses that have been used upon pavements and horse-railroads, have
acquired a habit of slipping and sliding along, catching with heel-calks
in the space between the stones; such horses do not at once relinquish
the habit, and wear their first set of our shoes much more rapidly than
the subsequent set, after they have assumed the natural action of their
feet. But, economical as a light shoe that will long outlast a heavy one
may be, the great saving is in the item of horse-flesh.
The value of the horses employed in the actual labor of the country
reaches a startling sum total.
The vast importance of the horse in the movement of business, was
never so fully understood and deeply felt as during the year past, when
the epizoötic swept over the continent, paralyzing all movement and
every form of human industry. Even the ships that whiten the seas
would furl their sails and steamers quench their fires but for the labors
of the horse. During the epidemic the canal-boats waited idly for their
patient tow-horses and railroads carried little freight; the crops of the
West lay in the farmers' granaries and the fabrics of the Eastern loom
and varied products of mechanical industry crowded the warehouses;
even the ragpicker in the streets suspended his humble occupation, for
the merchant, unable to transport rags, refused to buy them of the
gatherer. The investment of national wealth in horses being so
enormous, any means that