Rational Horse-Shoeing | Page 8

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 epizo?tic 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 adds to the efficiency of the horse greatly enhances the general prosperity.
[Illustration: PERFECT SHOE AND HOOF.]
[Illustration: IMPERFECT SHOE AND HOOF.]
It is an old English saying, that "a good horse will wear out two sets of feet." The meaning of this adage is obvious: a good horse's feet are useless at the time when his other powers are in the prime. Mr. Edward Cottam, of London, in his "Observations upon the Goodenough System," states that London omnibus-owners use up a young horse in four years; that is, a horse of seven years of age goes to the knackers at eleven, pabulum Acherontis; and the only noticeable cause of their failure is from diseases of the feet. A horse properly