Rational Horse-Shoeing | Page 3

the action of the frog upon the ground, which in the natural foot is threefold--acting as a cushion to receive the force of the blow and thus relieve the nerves and joints of the leg from concussion, opening and expanding the hoof by its upward pressure, quickening the circulation and thereby stimulating the natural secretions,--this all important part of the organization, without which there is no foot and no horse, becomes hard, dry, and useless. Then follows the whole train of natural consequences. The delicate system of joints inclosed in the hoof feel the pressure of contraction, the knees bend forward in an attempt to relieve the contracted heel. In this action the use of the leg is partially lost. The horse endeavors to secure a new bearing, interferes in movement, or stands in uneasy torture.
Nature frequently seeks relief by bursting the dry and contracted shell, in what is known as quarter or toe crack, and the miserable victim becomes practically useless at an age when his powers should be in their prime.
Every horseman will acknowledge that his experience has a parallel in the picture here presented. Many men have at various times attempted reform, but the difficulty heretofore encountered has been that the mechanical application was in the hands, not of the owners and reasoners, but in those of a class of men who are, for the most part, ignorant, prejudiced, and, consequently, apt to oppose any innovation upon the old abuses in which they have had centuries of vested right; and it was not until the studies of Mr. R. A. Goodenough that there were brought to bear veterinary knowledge, mechanical skill, and inventive faculty, to overcome the stolidity and interest which have been the lions in the way of true reform.
CHAPTER II.
FROG PRESSURE.
That portion of the hoof called the "frog," performs the most important visible function in the economy of the movement of the horse. It is intensely vital and vigorous. The greater its exposure and the severer its exertion, the more strenuous is the action of nature to renew it. It is the spring at the immediate base of the leg, relieving the nervous system and joints from the shock of the concussion when the Race Horse thunders over the course, seeming in his powerful stride to shake the solid earth itself, and it gives the Trotter the elastic motion with which he sweeps over the ground noiseless upon its yielding spring, but, if shod with heavy iron, so that the frog does not reach the ground to perform its function, his hoofs beat the earth with a force like the hammers of the Cyclops.
With the facility to error characteristic of the unreasoning, it has been one of the opinions of grooms and farriers that this callous, india-rubber-like substance would wear away upon exposure to the action of the road or pavement, and it has been one of their cherished practices to set the horse up upon iron, so that he could by no possibility strike the frog upon the ground.
In addition to this violation of nature, they pare away the exfoliating growth of the organ, and trim it into the shape that suits their fancy.
Without action, muscular life is impossible, the portion of the body thus situated must die, paralyzed or withered. Motion, use, are the law of life, and the frog of the horse's hoof with a function as essential and well-defined as any portion of his body is subject to the general law. Without use it dries, hardens, and becomes a shelly excrescence upon a foot, benumbed by the percussion of heavy iron upon hard roads. This is a loss nature struggles in vain to repair, the horse begins to fail at once. The elastic step, which in a state of nature spurned the dull earth, becomes heavy and stiff, and the unhappy brute experiences the evils partially described in the previous chapter.
To restore the natural action of the foot by putting the bearing on the frog, is the chief object of the system we advocate, and the Goodenough shoe is designed especially to provide for that first and last necessity. If this is accomplished with a sound horse, he will avoid the thousand ills that arise from the usual method, and, so far as his feet are concerned, he will remain sound.
If the shoe is adopted as a cure for the unsoundness already manifested in animals that have been deprived of the proper use of their feet, it will cure them, not by any virtue in the iron itself, nor by any magic in its application, but simply by giving beneficent nature an opportunity to repair the ruin that the ignorance of man has wrought upon her perfect handiwork.
This part of our subject is so important that we shall return to it