George Fleming

“ In shoeing, for example, I have more than once known that, for the sake of establishing their own ridiculous and pernicious system, when their masters have differed from it, they have, on purpose, lamed horses, and imputed the fault to the shoes, after having in vain tried, by every sort of invention and lies, to discredit the use of them. How can the method of such people be commendable, whose arguments, as well as practice, are void of common sense? ”

“ To fit the shoe to the foot without the aid of anvil and forge is impossible; and any one acquainted with the exactness and precision necessary to a perfect fitting would not hesitate to declare the attempt to be as absurd as it is mischievous.' Some excellent examples are given of the injury and inconvenience likely to arise from this stupid fashion.
In this accuracy of fitting the shoe by burning it to the hoof, lay the secret of dispensing with so many nails; and this was a veritable progress in the art of farriery, for which Mr Miles deserves every credit. ”

“ This is an important fact to remember, as the continual increase in length of the toe is one of the unavoidable evils of shoeing. Every hour the balance of the limb is being altered as the foot grows forward, and more strain is thrown on the back parts of it. In a state of nature, growth and wear would be continually balancing each other. At each shoeing, the abnormal length of the foot is certainly remedied by the skilful farrier, who reduces it to its natural proportions; but he has no sooner applied his shoe than the same process of growth again slowly, but surely, alters the aplomb. ”

“ Here now is a plain, easy method, agreeable to common sense and reason, conformable to the anatomical structure of the parts, and therefore to the design of nature—a method so plain that one would think nobody could ever swerve from it, or commit any mistake in an art where nothing is required but to make smooth the surface of the foot, to know what loss of crust each kind of foot will bear with advantage to itself, and to nail thereon a piece of iron, adapted to the natural tread of the horse ”

“ I allude to the interment of horses with the mighty dead, the fame of whose deeds was not allowed to pass to our time, and whose bones, fragments of weapons, or adornment, and the silent evidence of their friendship for the horse, alone remain to denote their having once upon a time existed. To a certain extent, the horse-shoes found in graves are trustworthy testimony to the antiquity of nail-shoeing, and the degree to which it prevailed. ”

“ This new method of shoeing, so long advocated by Osmer and Clark, had gained but trifling success up to the time when Moorcroft wrote his treatise. That gentleman, full of enthusiasm in the new-born profession, and sanguine as to the benefits to be derived from the seated-shoe, had the aid of machinery invoked to make this kind of armature more rapidly and less expensively than it could be manufactured by hand; and this, together with his deservedly high reputation as a veterinarian, brought it into general use, and so firmly established it in public opinion, that it is still the common shoe. ”

“ First, let us remember what our learned colleague, Professor Bouley, has said in his admirable works on shoeing: "The art of the farrier ought to be to preserve to the hoof the integrity of its form, essentially allied to that of its functions; and this result can only be obtained in leaving to the bars, the buttresses (arcs-boutants—the angle formed by the bar and crust) , and the frog and sole all their power of resistance; in protecting them without interfering with their action, their contact with the ground, their suppleness, or their natural flexibility." ”

“ There are probably few arts which have been known and practised for so long a period, which have been found of such general utility, and yet have undergone so little modification or real improvement as this of horse-shoeing. The earliest model of an iron shoe we can discover differs but little in form from those now in everyday use; and perhaps there are not many arts which have attracted a larger share of attention and experiment by men who had made the subject their profound study, and others who had not, and knew but little of the theoretical principles which should govern its practice. ”

“ The principal object in arming the hoof with a rim of metal is to protect it from the effects of wear. This was the intention of the inventor, and to-day it is our chief aim. To prevent the outer margin of the hoof from being broken and worn, by the simplest means in our power, is the cardinal problem with regard to the preservation of the horse's foot; and nothing appears to be easier to accomplish. Before our interference with that organ, its beautiful structures were contrived to meet every demand, and its manifold functions were freely and vigorously maintained. ”

“ Such a people must have loved the bold, dauntless courage of the horse, and while seeking to do its unmatchable powers justice in their poetry and adoration in their religion, they have testified to all posterity, by the unerring delineations of their chisels, the beauty and the grandeur of his form and disposition. ”

“ Words cannot describe the agony a horse must experience when he chances to put his foot on a sharp, or even a blunt stone. And yet the writers who have counselled this mutilation of the foot, have laid this tenderness—the limping gait, and falls with broken knees—to the nails of the shoe preventing expansion! Plates of leather covering the delicate frog and sole, and layers of tar and tow, are brought into requisition to compensate—though such is not confessed—for the loss of the horn ”

“ The mutilation of the hoof, by removing the best portion of its horn, at the very time it was most required, has inflicted serious injury on it and the bone over which it has to play during its arduous task of flexing the foot and limb; while the heavy iron shoe, and the increase of concussion it engenders on artificial roads, all tend to hasten the ruin of the animal—and sooner or later, depending on circumstances, we have either acute or chronic navicular disease, acute or chronic laminitis, or a host of other maladies of a more or less serious character. ”

“ Lightness and durability can only be attained by employing the best material. If the sole of the foot is not mutilated, it does not require to be covered by the shoe, as nature has furnished an infinitely better protection. Wide-surfaced shoes can therefore be at once dispensed with, and a narrow rim, fabricated from the very toughest and best iron, and adapted for travelling on slippery roads, while aiding foot and limb, and sufficient to sustain wear for four or five weeks, is all that is required. Here again the skilful artisan is needed, and science steps in to aid him. ”

“ It ought to be always remembered, that the more a horse's foot is pared, so the more do we expose it to accidents; it is depriving it, in the first place, of a defence that nature has given it against the hard and pointed substances it encounters; and, in the second place, and which is of the utmost advantage for both horse and rider, in not paring the sole, and only using as much of a shoe as is necessary to protect the horn, the animal will be no longer liable to slip on bad roads in winter or summer, when they are vulgarly called plombé, as will be shown. ”

“ In operating in the same manner by the pressure of the thumbs against the branches of the sole, the hands being joined around the hoof, I have also remarked and demonstrated to others the elasticity of the shoe, which follows the movements, dilatation, and contraction of the heels: the animal's weight, in coming upon the foot in every part, produces on it, as on the wall itself, the effect of a wedge driven into a piece of wood. All that can be said against my shoe is its too great elasticity when it is worn thin. ”

“ The shoe rests on the wall, sole, and frog of the foot, the latter being particularly supported by the light metal plate; the nails, rough and clumsy as they are, obtain a short thick hold of the sole and crust, and are badly riveted—though it is extremely rare that a shoe comes off on a journey lasting for weeks together. Years of shoeing in this rude fashion do not alter the shape of the Arab horse's hoofs; the longest day's ride, no matter how fast or fatiguing, whether on burning sand or on sun-baked rocky ground, will seldom, if ever, cause him to have inflamed feet. ”

“ So we can easily understand, that in certain parts of the world, horses have been and can be made serviceable to a certain extent without employing an iron defence. If one may judge from the paintings of Ancient Egypt and the sculptures of Assyria, where we see the horse portrayed with great skill, and with that minute perception of his external form which seems to us even now very remarkable, no protection for the hoof was ever had recourse to, and no remains of anything bearing a resemblance to such an appliance have been found. ”

“ There are in the Archaeological Museum of Besançon hippo-sandals provided with long hooks before and behind, and even on the sides. A horse furnished with such a chaussure could not walk four steps without mutilating himself and falling. What is more, we have hippo-sandals the two flanks of which are united above, and which could never make a shoe for a horse, even if the animal were standing still. . . . . . . When we see the same ground containing hippo-sandals and nailed shoes, it must be evident that the first were not destined for the feet of horses. ”

“ Without doing more than pointing out the most salient features of the subject—all details relative to the organization of the horse's foot and the practice of farriery being reserved for another opportunity—it will be seen that though of vital importance to the welfare of the useful creature, nothing is more easy of execution than a rational system of shoeing; and few arts are more difficult to practise than the ordinary irrational one, simply because the artisan has destroyed what he cannot repair, and must then use his best skill to protect what remains. ”

“ Fierce and undaunted in battle, the ancient Britons were also a horse-loving people, and largely employed horses in peace, as well as in war. They appear to have been passionately fond of horses, as the fragments of their poetry that have reached us abundantly testify: and it would almost appear that all their fighting men were mounted on spirited steeds. [2] Whether ridden by their fearless masters, or harnessed to the multitudes of chariots so conspicuous in their armies, the little hardy British steeds appear to have been well trained. ”

“ Every nail penetrating the crust may be looked upon as a source of injury to it; and with a shoe bedded in a solid manner on the crust and sole, as I have recommended, and diminished in weight to the utmost degree compatible with endurance for a certain period, it is astonishing what a small number of nails is needed. The ordinary heavy seated-shoe is damaging to the foot, not only because it rests on such a narrow basis, but also because its weight and instability necessitates its being attached by a large number of long thick nails which do great harm to the crust. ”

“ The hoofs of these mammoth creatures, thick and large though they be, are not nearly strong enough to support their ponderous weight for very long, even when not in draught. But when their great strength is put forth in propelling some five or six tons in one of our streets, and halting and backing repeatedly with this load, it is easy to see that the unshod hoofs must quickly succumb to the strain imposed upon them, and the excessively developed animal would be then only a helpless mass of bone and muscle, and as useless as a railway engine off the rails, or with its wheels broken. ”

“ Only the nobles who had given in their adherence to the Roman rule, and in everything, even to their names, had become Roman, became senators, gained a high rank, and in becoming rich became also effeminate, like the Romans themselves. Thus was extinguished the valorous Gallic nation; and, with its decadence, disappeared its love for the horse. During the Gallo-Roman period the cavalry became so scarce, that at the invasion of the barbarous hordes it can scarcely be traced. ”

“ The wandering Mongols who roam between the Great Wall of China, the desert of Gobi, and the Russian frontier, with their flocks of sheep and droves of horses and cattle, do not employ shoes for their hardy but uncouth solipedes, according to the account of my friend and fellow-traveller, Mr Michie. Whenever a pony selected from a drove has become footsore from being ridden too long a time, the rider dismounts, a fresh steed is caught from the crowd, and the hoof-worn one is set at large again, to recover as it best may the loss it has sustained. ”

“ This aversion, founded on the destructive action of an extreme degree of heat on the delicate parts of the foot, is so strong among them, that in bivouacs, when the Arabs of the Sahara saw the French shoeing their horses, and fitting the red-hot shoes to the hoofs, they exclaimed, 'Look at those Christians pouring oil upon fire!' In a word, they cannot understand why—especially in long marches, when exercise makes the feet more vascular, any one should wish to increase this natural heat by the action of hot iron. ”

“ A civilized nation which prized the horse so highly, and so largely employed it in war and in the public diversions, could not but display its wisdom in providing everything for its comfort and well-being; but it appears that the Greeks did not understand extending its utility by preventing undue wear of the hoofs and consequent lameness. All the paintings on vases and elsewhere represent the horse with nude feet. The climate of Greece, it must not be forgotten, is dry, and favourable to the hardness and durability of horses' hoofs ”